Gracie Bevan

“I carefully scrolled through his playlists and almost had a heart attack when my eyes landed on the one named Songs for Shannon.”
― Chloe Walsh, Binding 13

“My heart has been broken a million times by the same hand, yet I would let it happen a million times again if it meant it was by you.
I was weaker than I thought / my heart sagging like the stems of uncut, unkempt flowers because of the sunlight you held in your faraway heart / Maybe you weren't mine to love / I think I'm falling
The wallpaper above her bed frame was glued in my brain the way it was glued against her walls / I got so close to running my fingers against it / I wish I felt the confidence to tell you the truth, as strongly as I felt stubborn to hide it
Do you hear that? That's my heart knocking against my chest at the sight of you / I've never heard anything more terrifying / how could you provide me air and suffocate me at the same time?
Blue hydrangeas, pink tulips, red bleeding hearts / it's all you ever loved, but never yourself / I never understood why anyone spoke poorly of the color brown, it was a dream on you
And that kiss... I think about it all the time / was it wrong of me to think of you when you were never mine? / I feel lucky to have had you, but dismayed to know what life is like without you
Don't worry if the flowers pass, I'll be right there to plant you more / and when the soil grows old, I'll comfort it in the chaos of the storm
Am I a ghost in your story? / because you look at me with conviction when I don't even know the crime I committed
Burden me with your secrets / so I can carry the weight you're so fearful of letting go
To be close to you was to be haunted by what I couldn't have and to be reminded of how much I truly wanted you / and I'd be lying if I said I never thought about where my hands would take me across your body
Midnights and daydreaming hours of retracing steps to how we possibly got here / how did I ever let time pass this long without seeing you? / my heart was so full of our memories that painted my body like a scrapbook
I tried to stop loving you, but along the way, you found your way into the sound of my laugh, the style of my writing, and the threads of my clothes / I would've gone down on my knees just to hear you say yes
Neck stiff, legs weak, eyes set on what we could've looked like if you hadn't left / 'moving on' was a broken record that I never had the strength to lift the needle off of / If hearts were meant to love then why did mine feel so empty? / and suddenly, I fell
Glances, gazes, eyes following places they shouldn't have seen / intimacy was to be seen by you; free falling was to be touched by you / there was no such thing as a crowded room where you stood
She lives in between the pinks and yellows of the world / where a beautiful color is unknown to others / and when she speaks, I become a bee enthralled in a field of daisies”
― Liana Cincotti, Picking Daisies on Sundays

“Guys, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at school?” “School, shmool.” Tanu waves her hand. “We live freely. We’re not chained by the obligations of modern mundanity.” “Winter break,” Emil explains.”
― Ali Hazelwood, Check & Mate

“And if you “ship them hard” and “want to believe,” you might enjoy this little clue: three weeks ago, at a charity event, Nolan Sawyer—who is a notoriously bad loser—did not stop to take questions from journalists. But eyewitnesses reported that when asked how he felt about the possibility of Mallory Greenleaf accruing enough points to take the No. 1 spot from him, he simply smiled before walking away.”
― Ali Hazelwood, Check & Mate