Drabble Quotes

Drabble #79 – its skin of gristle (this isolate)

It’s a strange kind of reverence that comes with downing the night’s heartbreaks in the eve of winter. The air cold and dry, I watch you pack your luggage as I unzip mine. Bite my lip, act like the silence isn’t choking me. Your suitcase with the broken wheel drags by your side, like a dead body, heavy with memories and life lost. I toss in a piece of my heart just before the click of the lock. Do you know what it’s like, feeling like an echo? You were always the type who had a lot to say and no one ever knew what was going to come out of your mouth next. Today, you didn’t say a word, and I’m astonished by how thoroughly we have broken each other.

Drabble #77 – Fathoms Below

I know what it’s like to come home to everything being scattered and smashed, floor dirty with the heavy, invasive tread of strangers. It’s like the inside of my own head. The man who came to see me afterwards mentioned a lot about the pain, the grief, the wanting to blame someone and rage against the unfairness of it all. But what the man hadn’t mentioned was how I suddenly feel like I’m in on the joke. It’s hard to be the comic relief when no one wants to laugh at you anymore. And, god, isn’t that some game-changing irony. But that conversation’s already spoken for. It’s done, even if no one wants it to be. They all want to keep bringing it up, want some kind of conclusion, want everything to be okay, if I can just talk it out. But we all want a bunch of things we can’t have, and sometimes being okay isn’t what someone needs. They want a reason, a perpetrator, a motive, and more often than not you don’t get that. You just get a broken home; glass to clean up, furniture to replace, new memories to make.

Drabble #71 – Plum Tea

A soft, welcome laugh, you brush my hand. The shimmery oil rubbed into your skin glints in the light, catches the spot where you touched me. The grasshoppers are a low, distinct hum that fills the empty spaces lulling between topics. Before I know it, you are standing to refill a glass I hadn’t noticed I was drinking. I keep losing pockets of time. You brush my hand, seated again, and more fractures of light catch my eye where your fingers are peeking from the folds of your sleeve. Eyes like gems look back at me, speckled with laughter and glowing in the mid-summer heat. My breath stutters to a halt.

Drabble #55 – I'mma give you chills harmonizing to Otis, Isley, Marvin.

I am stopping to smell the flowers today and you are only ever kissed by men with shadowed eyes. We do not go to the market on cloudless days; the citrus is cheaper when it rains. I count coins, you count street corners, and we wonder how we managed to get here. I believe we are both slowly growing roots, despite the fact that nothing, not even our clothes, has ever fit us quite right. As always, we won’t leave until we have to, until you fall too quickly and scare yourself out of the memories you’ve made. It never fails to amaze me how recklessly naïve you live yet how astoundingly shy you become when faced with commitment. But that’s okay, I do not question you. Today we are getting ice cream on the pier and I know that, for now, this is enough.

Drabble #63 – our lips, darling, they're so disarming

There are times when you look at me like my body is unlike your own, like I hold secrets in my chest that you want to discover, like the color of my eyes is entirely new to you, like my hands and my arms and my waist are all a thing of beauty and should be worshipped and studied and appreciated. When you do, my stomach makes knots and I feel almost ill with it, like I’ve handed you my insides and asked you to take care of them. You keep taking my promises, cradling them to your chest, and I never see them again. You smile, too many teeth, all of them sharp, and I am not afraid. It should hurt, probably. But maybe I’m immune.