Love Poetry Books Novels & Stories

“Yes, ma’am.” The chambers were large, beautiful, and suffocating all at once. Expensive fabrics, imported furniture, and flowers in vases that probably cost more than entire villages back home. My home. My burned, broken, grieving home. I breathed a sigh of relief—I had passed the first test. The second would begin when the king entered my chambers. I fell onto the bed, thinking about the good times I spent with my beloved… “Alessia,” he had once whispered my name, kissing me softly on the cheek. “I will never stop loving you, my flower.”

Far beneath that moment… something continued observing the fragile pattern of effort and distance… recording how connection isn’t defined by perfection… but by whether it holds after it begins to slip.

"There's one in Capitol Hill open until eleven. We could just browse. No agenda." "Okay. Pick me up in twenty." The bookstore is quiet. Soft lighting. The smell of coffee and paper. We split up. An unspoken agreement to explore separately. I find him thirty minutes later in the poetry section, reading with complete focus. "Find anything?" I ask. He shows me a collection by Mary Oliver. "I didn't know I liked poetry. But this is—it's beautiful." "Buy it." "I will." We leave with five books between us. None of them self-help or business strategy. Just novels and poetry and a cookbook.

I giggled and sank into the tidal wave of his love. The night stretched long, and so would our happiness. Not long after, I became pregnant. When Caleb and I visited our new villa, we saw Thomas and Juliet tending flowers in the park. Their old clothes were streaked with dirt. Adrian was nearby, drunk in broad daylight, with a crying baby beside him. Under the scorching sun, their former pride had long since vanished. Seeing me, they hastily pulled on their masks and hurried away with Adrian. Their aging figures were the very picture of desolation.

I make my way through the aisles, my fingers trailing along the spines of books, until I reach the poetry section. I don't know why I'm drawn here. I just am. My body moves like it knows something my brain doesn't. I walk through the poetry section, line by line, shelf by shelf, until I stop. My hand freezes mid-reach. 'Pablo Neruda.' A whole row of his work, lined up neatly, my fingers pause over one book in particular. 'Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair.' I pull it off the shelf slowly, like it might bite me. The cover is worn, soft under my fingers, like someone's held this book a lot and loved it.

Things forgotten touch me now— & they’re clouding me w/ forgiveness, rethinking the time I was asked the question I knew I would never understand, but that question brings things—slow walks, time & space, Fleetwood Mac glistening living rooms w/ home & midnight specials—wrapped w/ the cellophane intention that such question I wouldn’t forget could somehow become a beautiful title for a first book in poetry.

separated her from the lover. "I have another one titled How do I love thee. Elizabeth Barret Browning. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day’s Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I pleaded as my hands caressed down her hair romantically. “You weren't expecting me?” she asked, frowning a little bit. I knew prolonging the conversation would result in another disagreement. Before she could continue her nagging, I leaned close to her, my lips sucking in the words from her mouth. “I love you,” I whispered, my eyes piercing into hers. I could see the smile tugging by the side of her lips. The knocking on the door disrupted our romantic atmosphere. “Who is it?” I asked, with a hint of frustration in my voice.

He answered her question with a question of his own. Aria's eyebrows straightened. "No. Why would I hide anything from you? And if you want to ask me something, ask clearly, Aleksandr." Aleksandr raised his chin and blew out a breath. "They say it true, Love is like a slow poison. It eats you slowly, sweetly and you let it. Love is like a poison." "Alexander, are you trying to say something?" Aria asked as she found his words dubious. "Poetry. I was trying my hand at poetry. I heard somewhere that love turned men into poets. I saw it today, it truly does."

She had to summarize all that in that first encounter or otherwise she would be wasting her time. He was looking down at his book, legs crossed. “Love is A Dog From Hell” by Charles Bukowski. An excellent choice of literature, she thought. He was wearing a long-sleeved knitted sweater and washed-out blue jeans, dark brown leather boots, too clean for hiking boots, he looked more like an indoor guy.