Courtney Peppernell

I hate to spoil the ending

But You is fine

You is still here

You is going to make it.

Darling,

kiss me like you need

to feel safe

Because my lips want to know

all the places

you have been hurt

So they can make all the pain

drift away

the way they reach for you and they find you through the dark

even if their eyes are

closed.

Kissing you feels like the start of a new season, the sun in the early morning, and moonlight reflecting on the ocean. There is never a moment that I don’t think about your lips and how they make me feel when they are on mine.

I wrote this thinking about you

and how if you were a novel,

You’d be an adventure of sadness and happiness

and love lost in between.

You would remind me of the sky and mountains

and constellations and caffeine.

You would be full of pages

that make me laugh and other times fall apart,

You would smell like history with a worn out spine

and ink that could still bleed.

You would always be the novel

I took down from the shelf to read.

A love so fiery it becomes the colour of cherries and candles and lipstick, and they will finally see the world with all its love to give.

What Makes Me Smile

You

in the morning light

after making love

all night.

Life is too short for games unless it’s a game of cards.

Don’t text back right away, if you like them pretend you don’t, and don’t you dare say I love you first. Well screw all that.

I will text you back in three seconds, I will tell you that I like you, and if I love you I’ll tell you every chance I get.

Life is unpredictable, and I’d rather play every card as honestly as I can than have a deck full of regrets and what ifs.

I tried to stop loving you

so I built walls around my heart

and found other names

to whisper in the night.

But you carved yourself into my veins

whether you meant to or not.

And sometimes I wonder

if you remember the way we looked at each other

or maybe you just forgot.

I picked up all your things

and I put them in a box.

I was going to send them back to you

all those things you gave me

when you promised I was the only thing you needed.

And then I realised

I can’t put every kiss in the box

or return every “I love you”

I can’t return every time I held you

or unwrite every love letter I wrote you

I can’t undo every time I touched you

or unhear the way you said my name

I can’t send back every “you’re beautiful”

because things will never be the same.

What am I going to do with all these things

if I can never pack them away?