Lina Burghard

“She’s like a modern-day Emily Dickinson without the weirdly punctuated poetry.”
― Rachel Spangler, Seeking Approval

“We get attached to what we can control and resist what we can’t.”
― Penelope Douglas, Tryst Six Venom

“I’m consumed. This is what it feels like. This is what right feels like. It was always wrong before. Kissing someone. Letting them touch me. I never had that burn low in my belly. I was never hungry. Until her. I sink into her mouth again, kissing, sucking, tasting… At least there’s this. I thought hating her was enough. If I couldn’t have this, at least I had her attention. Even if it was bad. At least I could destroy what I was going to lose anyway in three months when we graduated, and I couldn’t look at her every day anymore. But God, I do hate her. Her smile and her red lips. The way she smudges her dumb eyeliner, making her eyes look smoky and captivating, and her wild hair that always looks like it flew through the wind before she put it up in a ponytail. Her olive skin, how her bracelets make music every time she moves, her chipped, black nail polish, and those stupid biker boots with all the buckles she wears that make her legs so hard not to look at. The way she rolls her skirt up, and I can’t pay attention in calculus. I hate it all. How every part of her looks like it has a taste”
― Penelope Douglas, Tryst Six Venom

“It never looks like me, the person in the mirror , the black script reads.
She looks like everyone else.
I look around, not seeing anyone else in the hall, except for a few loiterers down by the doors to the lunch room.
I keep reading.
She’s like every woman on his arm—the same hair, the same clothes, the same smile, because to beat she has to compete, right?
I stood in front of the mirror this morning, a mouthful of toothpaste and my hair tangled by your fingers. You sucked my lips swollen last night, and I can still smell your kisses on my skin.
The world swims, how hard I’m used by you.
How all I have when you’re done with me is my bones.
I don’t care what I look like anymore as long as I look like yours.
Marked, raw, tangled, sore, and scented like you—I don’t care.
As long as I look like yours”
― Penelope Douglas, Tryst Six Venom