The Dead Romantics

by Ashley Poston

Every person has a secret. Every secret has a story.

Love was putting up with someone for fifty years so you’d have someone to bury you when you died.

Rose thrived on parties, on the energy, the loudness, the people. I liked them sometimes—on special occasions, like at concerts or Comic-Cons, but there was nothing quite like the silence of a well-loved library.

Grief was the exact opposite. It was full and heavy and drowning because it wasn’t the absence of everything you lost—it was the culmination of it all, your love, your happiness, your bittersweets, wound tight like a knotted ball of yarn.

“I miss coffee.” “Connoisseur or lifeblood?” “I liked the notes in some very limited roasts that I procured from—” “Connoisseur, right. You’d hate this stuff, then. Definitely motor oil and sugar.” He wrinkled his noise. “That sounds disgusting.” “I drink the battery acid juice so I can go zoom-zoom,” I replied.

Speaking of lowest, I would also like to give a very enthusiastic fuck you to my anxiety. Thanks for, as always, being the worst.

to anyone who has proclaimed drunkenly at a bar that love is dead—I’ve been there and trust me, love is not dead. It’s simply sleeping off a raging hangover. Give it two Tylenol and tell it to call you in the morning.