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Epitaphs Of The Heart: A Lover’s Anthology

This poetry collection is not only a celebration of love, but an embrace of what has once been and what will come again

SHAMROCK SUN

By: Miranda Kanter

@miranda.kanter

I think of you as the colour yellow.

Those specs and spatters of dust suspended in light; hushed yellow as it breaks through your window. Your window, which keeps its back to the sun, so sunrise for us only happens at noon. A midday sunrise – you are a morning delayed; seeping through the Irish flag that covers your window, washing that yellow light green.

I think of you as the colour red.

As your rouge-streaked cheeks toning mine, untempered. By September, you’ll be well back in Belfast; I turn my head to the side and stick out my tongue to scrape it clean of the words I and love and you. Without time to wonder whether I really yet mean the words stuck to the tips of my nails, I tuck them into the hair that I brush back behind your ear, for you to take back home.

Back home, I eat as you fall asleep; fall asleep just when you wake. When I wake, it’s with the sun at noon, your time.

I think of you still as a midday sunrise.

POCKET MEMORIES: HOLDING ON

By: Ella Morale

@pocket.elfie

it feels so special to hold your

book with your pencil marks

scratched through it

i want you to mark my skin

i want you to fold my corners in

at the parts that feel most

important to you

TANGIBLE LOVE

By: Eri Dixon

@eri.ecdc

Hold the fire until it burns your hands then keep holding.

UNTITLED MUSING ON DAY #103

By: Florence Syed

@sleepyy.pixie

I had to learn the hard way that love should not be unconditional. 

An honourable notion

But one that is dishonest

The way that I love is through devotion

I will spend day after day running my fingers through the knots of your hair and awakening early to place honey and bread at your feet and I will clutch your hand and kiss at your flesh in attempts to soothe when your eyes are wet

I will devote my flesh, time, blood, bones and anything you’d wish from me all that I pray is that you ask me to 

All that I pray is that you desire me to 

recognize my yearning to love you, to need you, to want you, to take you 

But love without conditions is one that neglects the self

It is one that leaves the giver with empty hands and tired knuckles

One that gives and gives and gives but the reciprocation can never be of equal footing

Not when I deify you into a god and lie on my knees before you

Worshipping and praying in a manner that many would argue is unbecoming 

But devotion has made me reckless and simultaneously weak 

Weak knees, weak ankles and weakened restraints 

and by placing you so high it leaves you in no other position but to look down at me 

And that is not the way that I desire to be looked at by any lover. 

EVERYONE

By: Annie Chantraine

@goo_g1rl

I want to be in love with everyone in the world.

My physical body is only capable of such a limited expression of love compared to the sheer scope of love I feel shoot through me like sun arrows.

I want to feel every heartbreak, every tender cheek graze, every tear hitting every casket, every kiss planted on the lips for the first time.

I want to feel it all and I want to make everyone feel it too. 

I want to follow the thread that weaves us together. 

I want to start at beginnings and cross boundaries of space and time and body and world

I want to return to you and start again, forever, differently each time.

What if I lose you to my longing?

Flame To A Wick

By: Harsh Patankar

@vantablackcult

Moonlight on the open shore

The streetlights glowing door to door 

Your frame reclining on the floor

I don’t think I’ll speak anymore

What if I hurt you? 

Wipe the plasma off your sore

Outside we chase green shining from lighthouses in distant dark

We ran through eyesore streets and dog parks 

Let off our leash

What if I lose you to my longing?

SWEAT IT OFF AND THE REST IS JUST A DAY WITH YOU

By: Emmanuelle Toohey-Carignan 

@ithinkthatuh

Moonlight on the open shore

The streetlights glowing door to door 

Your frame reclining on the floor

I don’t think I’ll speak anymore

What if I hurt you? 

Wipe the plasma off your sore

Outside we chase green shining from lighthouses in distant dark

We ran through eyesore streets and dog parks 

Let off our leash

What if I lose you to my longing?

(SUCKER PUNCH)

By: Anna-Giselle Funes-Eng

@annagiselle.fe

I think I might’ve loved you

In another life before

I wonder, is it selfish

To maybe ask you for one more?