A Ballad of Phantoms and Hope

by K.M. Moronova

rarity. The desire to kiss a man you’ve only just met. Yet, it is the most extraordinary sentiment a person can experience. A rush. A feeling you can sense from the deepest parts of your marrow.

“Then it rots. It festers and turns into poison. The first ones aren’t so bad. You’re able to lie to yourself and bury the decay. But it spreads—it doesn’t ever stop and no matter what you try to kill it with, it remains. I’d rather they hit me… because it’s easy to hate them for it, but when they make you hate yourself—that’s hard. That never goes away. It never heals. There will always be that nagging ache in the deepest parts of your heart that whisper to you that you are vile. And you don’t know what to believe because you’ve heard it for so long. Do we not become what we’re seen as? Do we not eventually give in to the madness of it all?”

There is no pain greater than feeling left behind. Forgotten.

He is my only comfort, my only thought. Even when I’m at war within myself, he’s here. I love you, I want to whisper to him even though I know he will not hear it, cuddled in sheets. I’ve loved you all along.