Lang Leav - Love Looks Pretty on You

Also by Lang Leav Poetry Love & Misadventure Lullabies Memories The Universe of Us Sea of Strangers Fiction Sad Girls

For Michael, my love. Love Looks Pretty on You copyright 2019 by Lang Leav. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews. Andrews McMeel Publishing a division of Andrews McMeel Universal 1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106 www.andrewsmcmeel.com www.langleav.com ISBN: 978-1-5248-5193-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018960375 This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. ATTENTION: SCHOOLS AND BUSINESSES Andrews McMeel books are available at quantity discounts with bulk purchase for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail the Andrews McMeel Publishing Special Sales Department: . Introduction Six is the highest roll on the die, the Lovers in a tarot deck, and Virgo in the zodiac. My sixth poetry title, Love Looks Pretty on You , is a celebration of the female spirit. In this book I weave the threads of my past to complete the tapestry of my present.

I reflect on my life to this point, as a woman and a creator who has come full circle. In this book I pay homage to my mother and to my sisters, all over the world. I celebrate the synergy of our work and relationships. The love we have for each other and, most importantly, the love we have for ourselves. Love looks pretty on you, and you should wear it with pride. x Lang At Last Love looks pretty on you.

Makes you soft, tender, proud. Makes you sit up and take notice. Gives you a home to set down your things. What a blessing it is, to have music and dancing and poetry. What a gift it is, to look at someone and say, Im so happy to have found youat last, at last, at long, long lastyoure here. All this time, I thought I was writing for the lovers, when Ive been writing for the writers.

The Long Way Youre the girl who takes the long way home. This is the way you do it. This way you will have stories to tell. About lovers and liars, thieves and kings. You will have spine-chilling tales to spin. You will see the ones who rose so fast, dazzled for a moment before they crashed back down to earth, crawled back into the dust.

But not you. Never you. This is the way youve always been. A hook at the end of a long, long line. Waiting patiently. You will get there and believe me when you get there: you will be glad you took your time.

Dont stay where you are needed. Go where you are loved. Making History History will look back on critics as one collective voice, tainted with bitterness, colored by their ignorance and failure to find the pulse of their generation. As for the poets, history will look back and know us by name. Endless Cycle You want to hurt your father for all the times he has made your mother cry. Because youre the only one in the world he loves more than himself.

So, in a weird, fucked-up way, you find yourself with someone just like him, and just like you wanted, you see the hurt in your fathers eyes. But it ends up hurting you too. And I can already picture us ten years from now, living our lives like parallel lines. Looking across at each other from time to time. Someone Else I dont think its right, telling someone to stop needing somebody else. Have you ever felt the twist of loneliness in the pit of your stomach? Sat in silence with nothing to look forward to? The last thing you should do is tell someone they can fix it on their own.

That no one else can fix it for them. Believe me, sometimes all it takes is someone else. This Year I am starting this year barefoot in the sand. Moonlight on my skin and sea-wind through my hair. Love in my heart and murder in my veins. This is not the year I leave to chance or karma.

It is not a year to live and let live. If we have unfinished business, the wolves will be howling your name. If there is blood on your hands, you will get what you deserve. If you think youre safe, all youve done is bought yourself time. If you think distance can protect you, I can cross oceans in a heartbeat. And if ever you find my name slipping from your memory, I can promise you, by the time this year is through, you will never forget it again.

More or Less When love is seen from two points of view, what we were I can only guess. I am certain it was love with you but to love, you did not confess. So was it I Who made it more? Or was it you Who made it less? I have buried myself so deep in my words that sometimes I cant tell if I am the person writing or the one hiding between the lines. My Mother My mother was a woman without country as I lay curled in her womb. Her body marked for death, teeming with life. My life, barely a glow when she glared into the pit of darkness, a hairline crack from death, crawling to the light, dreaming of a faraway shore, and a little girl in her arms.

My mother, my safe passage into this world, fought a war to show me wars can be won. How Love Leaves You There is no telling how you will love when you do, if you will let it consume you or free you. If love is a chain-link fence or a pair of wings. If love comes on a Monday morning or a Sunday afternoon. Who knows what gifts or sorrows it will bring? But we all know the story of how love leaves you, if you think back to when it last left. And if youve forgotten, let me remind you.

How love never really ends. How your heart breaks the same way it beats, again and again, and again. Vultures We all have moments of darkness, moments when we are so unlike ourselves. And like vultures they wait for a slip, a misstep, then they take that part of us and try to convince the world that is all we are. Pandoras Box Longing has a language that is all her own. The language of skin, the language of flowers.

I am a body of longing, a vessel of language. For you, I am calamity in a locked box where the key is still turning. For you, I am a mistress in her ivory tower humming. For you, I am a songbird preening her feathers. For you, for you, I am a bed of roses, blooming. Every time I see my name, I hear it in your voice.

Regrets There it is, that one thing in your past you wish you could undo. It sits in your mind like a big, red, tantalizing bow. A gentle tug is all it would take to set things right. If only you could get to it. But you cant. Letter to the Past Tomorrow, youre going to fall in love, and it wont be pretty.

Tell your mother, even though it will terrify her. Tell her you love him so much, that for once in your life, you dont have words for it. Tell her it hurts when he looks at you, when he takes from you. Tell her how the sun has betrayed you, how she only carries his light. When he isnt there, everything is a shadow of his absence. Dont go upstairs with him.

Youre going to regret it. Hell never change. I know youre so lonely you cant stand it. The kind of lonely that has teeth. A lone wolf howling at the moon. There is a savagery to what you feel.

It eats you up inside. But you will get through it; you dont need his mouth to placate you. You dont need his hands to untangle the butterfly knot in your heart. Your love is a fire that will burn itself out. Let it ravage you. Things are coming you cant even imagine.

If you knew what they were, you would forgive this one injustice, this one catastrophe that has brought your life to a screeching, screaming halt. The world will turn for you again, and when it does, it will take you anywhere you want. I have to go now, but I love you. I need to leave you, but Ill always be with you. One day, youll meet me here, and I will tell you this: I will tell you that we made it. Loyalty The only ones they can turn against you are those who were never with you.

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