The Dead Romantics

by Ashley Poston

but never question the mind of a teenager. You wouldn’t get very far.

Honestly yuhhh

the sleeves rolled up to his elbows to reveal rather intimidatingly sexy forearms.

Brother whaaaat

How could two people reconcile and trust each other when they fell in love with the lies the other person told them?

All that we had left was dino-shaped mac and cheese. Perfect depression food, at least.

It was the universe telling me that I couldn’t forget. That if love was true, then love was a lie. That I had been happy once, happy then, but not happy forever. Because that wasn’t my story. That even my stories weren’t mine. Perhaps they never were.

And I recognized that kind of smile, finally. The kind you didn’t really show to strangers. The kind you kept to yourself because the world had been shit, and your heart had been broken so many times by different people and places and stories.

Because loneliness was the kind of ghost that haunted you long after you were dead. It stood over your plot in the cemetery where a lone name sat carved in marble. It sat with your urn. It was the wind that carried your ashes when no one claimed your body.

I didn’t realize how empty I was until I needed to write. And by then, I couldn’t.

“I drink the battery acid juice so I can go zoom-zoom,” I replied.

but either way time was passing, slowly ever on, leaving people behind like a flower losing its petals one by one.

Love wasn’t a whisper in the quiet night. It was a yelp into the void, screaming that you were here.

you don’t ever lose the sadness, but you learn to love it because it becomes a part of you, and bit by bit, it fades. And, eventually, you’ll pick yourself back up and you’ll find that you’re okay. That you’re going to be okay. And eventually, it’ll be true.”