Darkest Poems

Elijah Dawson had everything—a billion-dollar empire, a name that commanded respect, and the kind of life others could only dream of. By 20, he’d conquered the business world, turning his love for cars into an empire. But there’s one thing he can’t own: Eloise Hart, his late brother’s wife, and the woman who’s haunted him for years. Eloise is chaos in human form. Tattooed, reckless, and unapologetic, she lives her life with zero regrets. The world sees her as a disaster waiting to happen, a woman who drags Elijah’s name into scandal every chance she gets. But what they don’t know is that she’s the one woman he’s never been able to let go. Elijah knows he should stay away, that every time he’s near her, he risks losing everything—his reputation, his empire, and the respect he has to his late brother. He swore he’d never cross that line, but how long can he resist when Eloise is the one thing he’s always wanted but could never have? Because for Eloise, she could fuck every man on the planet, but not him. Not her brother-in-law.

Kyra Hopkins doesn’t believe in marriage and long term relationships. She co-manages her dream job with her two best friends Lily and Bipasha. With the two worried about her no-dating state, they hit a club with plans to GET KYRA LAID. In a White tiny dress they leave her in a bar nurturing a glass of water and pondering what exactly her newest client’s birthday party theme should be. Horses or cars. That’s what she voices out to the sinfully hot man who took the seat beside hers. And he’s got Kyra’s feet feeling like they were lit on fire. Worst of all, she got what it meant to have butterflies flutter in your stomach walls. Best of all, the man knows what she wants and he wants it too and more. Kyra got in for the ride of her life, planned for a weekend because remember? Kyra doesn’t do long term. But then, neither is Nicholai Damien Ivanov or Sin as he’s more popularly known as into long term relationships. One night stands or at a stretch a weekend fling. Why does the angel in white getting stuck in his head and refusing to leave? Why couldn’t his PI track her from the little information she dropped about herself. The questions haunted his nights and refused to leave until he caught sight of his Angel in a black dress on another man’s arm, then his sister hugged her referring to her as Kyra while his Angel introduced herself to him as April. Sin got his answer and meant to show her how much they weren’t over yet. In fact they hadn’t even begun. It was just the beginning of Nicholai Ivanov’s obsession with his one-night stand.

My father organized a husband for me. He needed me to get married to him for his benefit but never thought about mine. Where I come from our fathers told you who you should marry. Women are nothing but pawns for them to toy around with. I was prepared for a ruthless husband like my father was, but I was surprised when I met Dex. He is patient and honest. His father and his brother want him to be as ruthless as them. My father wants control and money. Dex has the power to end them all if he gets help from his biggest enemy who was once a friend.

Annalise is 21 and in college with her two best friends and her sister. She is starting her last year off on a good start. She is one grade ahead of her average age. She is studying art and wants to be the best she can be. She is assigned a partner for her last big assignment, Theo Hyde. He is the guy she has had a crush on for years, but he is also her best friend's ex-boyfriend. She tries to focus on the project, but her feelings keep getting in the way.

Tunnels deconstructs the individual’s Romantic fascination with ‘love’ or the grammaticality of beauty. Ideally, the ‘tunnels’ in the collection are subterranean love poems from the suburban imaginary. These seemingly syntactic tunnels travel through one’s literary imagination or heterotopic dreamscapes, and while αγάπη (Greek for ‘love’) inspires these rhizomic tunnels to navigate the abysmal ‘meta-spectacle’ of gesture, language or moment of poemness, the mind like the many-colored jeepneys of Manila, where driving past roast goose restaurants in Shek Kip Mei or spotting stilt houses in Kampong Kleang, attempt to explore the transgeneric textualities of the everyday, alongside the unstructurality of time and space, the littoral and the liminal.

While cleaning Desmond Maynard's house, I accidentally knocked over his mother's keepsake. He once told me it was his most precious possession. But when I picked it up, hundreds of love letters spilled out. There were beautiful poems, passionate lyrics, and heartfelt confessions. He had written one letter a week without stopping. On the back of each one wrote a line: To My Love, Bunny. The nickname rang a bell. It was his junior in college. Things started to make sense. I slaved away for 13 years, running his household and caring for his family, but Desmond never even said he liked me. That was because he already had someone he liked. I sorted the letters by date, put them back, and grabbed my phone to make a call. "Mom, I'm in for the marriage proposal."

"Shards in Eternity" is a story of passionate and profound love that transcends familial and friendship bonds. At the core of this emotional saga is an intense relationship between two individuals, a love that manifests in various aspects of their lives, be it as partners, family members, or friends. As their love reaches its peak, an unexpected tragedy strikes, jeopardizing the foundations of these relationships. Life confronts them with an unimaginable tragedy as one of the key figures in this deep love faces an inevitable death. This narrative explores how love can flourish in the darkest moments and how the bonds that unite these characters prove stronger than ever in the face of adversity. "Shards in Eternity" is an emotional journey that examines the resilience of love and how it can illuminate even the darkest moments of our lives.

how far will she go to reclaim her life? Even the devil was once an angel, and sometimes salvation comes from the darkest places. A haunting journey of loss, resilience, and the ultimate price of redemption.

In the quiet of the forest, the darkest fears are born. The people of Dunballan, harbour a dark secret. A secret more terrible than the Beast that stalks the dense forests of Dunballan. A secret that holds David McCavendish, last in a long line of Lairds, in its unbreakable grip. It’s down to Sally, David’s lover, to free David from the sinister clutches of the Beast. But, with the whole town against her, she must ally herself with an ancient woodland force and trace Dunballan’s secret back to its bitter origins. Those origins lie within the McCavendish family history, and a blasphemous heresy that stretches back to the beginning of time. Some truths are too terrible to face, and the darkest of these lie waiting for Sally, in the Quiet Places. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

Akemi Sean Lee is a woman who was loved, was hurt, and will take vengeance. After the tragedy she considered the darkest in her whole life, she changed herself into a version of a woman she didn’t imagine she would be. She worked hard, graduated, and specialized in New York in the field of engineering. Five years later, she will be back in the Philippines. Wiser. Bolder. Braver. She will return to avenge the three people who threw her into the muddiest and darkest period of her life. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A heart for a heart. She will be back for her game—the game of vengeance. But faith is indeed playful. In her game, she will discover something. Something that will rip her heart and herself apart once more. How will she face and overcome the game that she thought was hers?