2 April, 1937 Letters To Véra By Vladimir Nabokov

“It’s amazing how much damage can be done when you have nothing but good intentions.”

— Tom Marin

The child chews

an empty spoon,

as if it were a dagger

he must swallow

night after night,

until hunger forgets

his name.

-Cyrus K

She does not know

how I love her with the kind of ache

that gnaws through bone

and drinks from the marrow.

Even when her smile blooms

for another's dawn,

I gather my own ruin

just to make her laugh,

as if her laughter

could stitch the torn seams

of my unraveling soul.

I do not touch her skin

to feel warmth...

I touch her silence,

her chaos,

her dreams curled like fists in sleep.

When I kiss her,

my lips meet her heart,

I am drinking from the chalice

of every life she’s lived before me.

I am not licking her body,

I am tasting her soul.

I am not undressing flesh,

I am peeling open the pages

of her heart’s forbidden scriptures,

reading with reverence

the verses no man has dared recite.

Our love,

if it can be called that,

is no polished jewel.

It is a rose

born in rot,

drowned in rain,

fed by sorrow,

suffocated in shit,

burnt by longing.

Still, it grows,

bloody petals,

razor-edged thorns,

aching upward for a sun

that forgets it daily.

She wounds me without malice,

yet I kneel in thanks.

Each time she leaves,

she takes the breath

but leaves the lungs,

so I may remember

what drowning in her felt like.

Even now,

knowing I will never be

the reason her eyes glow,

I carve poetry from pain

to gift her joy,

like a madman

plucking out his own ribs

to build her a cradle of light.

Let the last tree fall,

let the stars bleed out

in the throat of the sky.

Let the oceans forget their names,

and even after they become dust,

I will still love her;

not because she is mine,

but because loving her

taught me how to survive

a fire that asks for nothing

but to burn

and burn

and burn.

She is not mine.

She is no one's.

But I am hers...

even after the last songbird

chokes on dust.

-Cyrus K

Fin

No more love No more poems No more hearts No more souls

No more sticks No more stones No more splints No more bones

No more bricks No more walls No more mines No more yours

No more tears No more loss No more fears No more gods

No more graves No more rows No more wars No more jokes

No more needs No more wants No more sex No more cunts

No more slack No more ropes No more deaths No more ghosts

No more breaths No more goals No more dreams No more hope

No more sleep No more thoughts No more thoughts No more thoughts

Embrace the dark Till the new day's begun There's always the dawn Always the sun

--- 30-4-2025, M.A. Tempels © Napowrimo 30: Always the sun

My mind holds the weight of

Long sleepless nights.

Each night I

Wait there to be taken,

By the space between the blinks,

Into colours i can only

Hope to think

I could imagine,

Where life is more, and

Where sleep is less

Than a reprieve.

its so hard to believe someone could love me. im always always too much or too little. never enough.

She was never mine.

Not even in dreams,

where shadows lie softer than truth.

But I love her

like a noose loves the neck...

tight, desperate,

aching to belong.

She moved through me

like winter in old bones,

slow, cruel,

reminding me I’m still alive

only to feel the cold.

I gave her a love

like a blade gives mercy;

sharp,

faithful,

and never asked for.

She was the war I bled for

before the first shot was fired.

And I...

I was the wound

that stayed open

long after she was gone.

-Cyrus K.

“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.”

— Og Mandino

“One smile can start a friendship. One word can end a fight. One look can save a relationship. One person can change your life.”

— Unknown