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i. Rob
I expected a knight in shining armour but you were
just a boy, just a boy.

ii. Jonny
you flirted and you teased and you kissed me
at midnight on new year’s eve and set the tone
for that whole god-forsaken year.

iii. Thomas
I could taste lies on your tongue and doubt in your fingers;
you said you were a taurus but you were gemini all over.

iv. Liam
friends shouldn’t kiss in the kitchen and
friends shouldn’t drink gin together and
friends shouldn’t cry, drunk on misery, and
friends shouldn’t break another friend’s heart and
I’m still sorry.

v. Pete
I expected just a boy but you were
a knight in shining armour, silver to the pretty
ivory teeth, who was looking for a damsel and found
only don quixote, tilting at windmills and refusing
to be saved.

vi. Helen
we were drunk and you were more beautiful
under the harsh car park lights than I had noticed before
and you were mid-sentence and I was mid-hiccup and
we still laugh about it now.

vii. Natalie
you grabbed my face with blushed pink hands and vodka breath
and you tasted like gin but I let you kiss me as if I was a glass of
strawberry daiquiri, I let you drink me in as if I was a mojito;
and you woke up with the sharp tang of mint on your tongue, and
an empty memory.

viii. Oxford
when I was younger, you were a puff of cigarette smoke and
a bunch of dirty stories, but now you are a forgotten kiss, a
lingering regret.

ix. Kirk
you went to durham and I swear I could see the city’s river
in your eyes, the castle in your mouth, and I tangled the spires
of king’s cathedral and st andrew the great with your fingers and
two ancient cities met with a smile, with a kiss, that could not bridge
the miles of distances, could not fold these road maps tight enough;
we were stood either side of the north south divide
and you never bothered to call me the next day anyway.

x. Pete
you had been searching for a damsel but settled for
quixote, found adventure in helping me fight imaginary dragons
but distance is a funny thing and as I tumble across continents
and drift over oceans, your white horse rears on the shoreline
and you wish on falling stars for impossible things.

xi. Aslan
we were fire meeting fire, two fixed points throwing out lines and
hoping they would intersect but if they did not we would not stoop
and try again. we were stubbornness meeting defiance, we were
sharp teeth meeting sharper arrows, a lion and a hunter trying to
stifle natural instincts, but instincts override, instincts overpower
and now we play hunter and hunted in never-ending loops through
the bamboo groves of china.

xii. Illyia
curiosity killed the cat. curiosity led me to your bed but
your hands kept me there as your mouth tripped over english, over things
you didn’t mean. you were not curiosity, you were danger and I was a foolish
cat, thankful for her nine lives, thankful for falling on her feet.

xiii. Charlotte
when we kissed I swear the universe unfolded on the underside
of my eyelids, because squeezing them shut so hard praying that this was
real left me with swimming storms of cobalt blue, lilac blossoms and
sprinklings of stars winking in the twilight. you were a sun burning under my
fingers, me a mere satellite, a comet lassoed by your gravity, helpless
under your lips, weak at the knees from your atmosphere.
we kissed like lovers and woke up as friends and I love you like a sister
and we can laugh now at the table, but the blush remains pink on our
cheeks, the memories froth from the white wash of my oceanic dreams
and I toss over waves of sleep, your light arching through the night.

xiv. Antonio
I expected italian passion, and you gave me tongue and teeth and
a passion that burned, that scorched, that singed.

xv. Darcy
your card tricks have nothing on the magic spell you cast on my heart-
I still don't know how I fell so fast, fell so hard as our planes
parted the skies like pulling curtains open and now the daylight holds sadness,
the nights sea-foam memories of your crooked seven-of-diamonds smile, your
broken jack-of-spades fingers. I was the joker that never fit in with
your deck, but we were so close it hurt.
(I swear the king-of-hearts is winking at me and my passport is squirming
in my pocket to pull the red-velvet curtains shut on this interval, to
fold into your house of cards with an ace-of-clubs sigh).