Alice Smith

“Back to the dark, my cursed throne,
I bear her forth, I stand alone.
Her breath is shallow, soft and dim,
Her pulse a song—a fleeting hymn.”
― Mason Carter, Gothic Poems to Love & Liberty: A Collection of Poems on Myths & Broken Hearts

“It should weigh nothing.
Just wood and air,
a shape meant for sitting,
a space meant for filling.
But somehow, it carries more than I do.
This chair—
your chair—
still leans slightly to the left,
still remembers the way you sat,
one leg tucked under,
hands resting lightly on the arms,
as if you were always about to leave
but never quite did.”
― Mason Carter, Saltwater & Smoke: Poems of Almosts, Goodbyes, and What We Leave Behind

“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.”
― Emily Dickinson

“You were a language I learned by ear,
syllables pressed into the curve of my neck,
intonations traced along my spine.
But love, I have forgotten how to conjugate us—
the past imperfect, the future conditional,
sentences unraveling into tenses
that no longer hold.”
― Mason Carter, Saltwater & Smoke: Poems of Almosts, Goodbyes, and What We Leave Behind