The Unrequited

by Saffron A. Kent

“The day we met you watched the moon While I watched you. Tall and alone. Dark and lonely. You looked like my mirror. Cracked and empty. Dried up and chewed out. I could have been yours. If only you had looked at me.”

Poetry.

“I never knew. I wondered, though.” “What?” His eyes roam around, from the tops of my breasts to my belly button ring. “That you blush with your whole body.”

THOMAS ABRAM 🥵

“Because unrequited love is like a dead, useless organ. It’s functionless. It’s sicker than a disease. You can cure a disease, but you can’t fix a defective soul. That’s the most frustrating thing in the world, to be that powerless.”

“So you see,” he whispers over my lips, ghosting the wet, soft flesh over my plump, salty ones. “You can fall out of love if you’re in love with someone like me.” As he hauls me even closer and fuses his lips with mine, I can only think of one thing. If I ever fell in love with Thomas Abrams, I’d never fall out of it.

I think about how he laughs when I climb up his body like a monkey in desperation. He laughs when I get mad at him for stealing my Twizzlers, like I steal his cigarettes. He laughs when he sees my polka dot socks. He laughs when I insist on wearing those ridiculous Russian fur hats—his words, not mine. He laughs when I tell him he’s the worst teacher anyone has ever had, that his home assignments are stupid. He laughs when he fucks me and I get too needy for my orgasm. He laughs when my words stutter while reading my poems and riding his cock.

“No, that’s…that’s not right. You’re not beautiful. I think you’re the most exquisite thing I’ve ever seen.” He licks his lips, his eyes flitting back and forth. “No, not a…not a thing. You’re more than that, Layla. You’re…the poem I can never write. Yeah, you’re the piece of poetry I can never hope to finish, no matter how hard I try.”

“You bring them back…my words.”

Layla Robinson, the fire-breather. My fire-breather.

“A lover is the one who waits,” he paraphrases. “Then, I’ll wait. Forever.”