Nocticadia

by Keri Lake

“That is the tragedy of women, isn’t it? We deny ourselves beauty for the sake of misleading men.”

SPEAK THE COLLECTIVE TRUTH

Calling her beautiful was like calling the sun lukewarm. She’d blazed like the hottest part of a flame in that dress. And fuck me, I’d felt the heat.

“And so the moth befriended the flame.”

besties for the resties

As toxic as it was, I relished this game between us, the push and pull, the stolen touches and delicious tension. I knew it was wrong. I knew what hell this would bring.

“You’re going to destroy me. And I won’t stop you.

“And because I’m a selfish prick who has to live with the fact that I cannot have you to myself, I’m going to ruin you so that any boy who comes after me will leave you deeply unsatisfied, and you’ll be left fucking your own fingers, desperate to remember the time you had your professor’s face between your legs.”

was the warmth of the sun on a cold and rotting corpse. The first breath after a lifetime of death.

POETRY

“Jealousy is a callow schoolboy’s emotion that ends in hard feelings and bloody noses. What I feel for you, Miss Vespertine, would destroy lives.”

This man has destroyed me

You’ve infected every part of me, and I can’t stop. I can’t stop this obsession.”