iii

❝ You were the antidote I savoured when the 
poison was left to writhe. The small bowl of 
water, porcelain rimmed, I placed my sunburnt
feet in to sooth. That’s the problem
with drowning in people just to make yourself 
feel worthy. That is the issue with thinking that
you are all the more beautiful because of the ruins,
that savouring your own pity is romantic, that 
revelling in melancholy is cute. It’s not.

There is you and there is me, there is all
the words we could have said but didn’t, all the 
flavours we could have consumed but just let 
the hunger linger, instead. You leave words to 
roar and they turn into a god damn hurricane.
I promise myself different things each time, 
like how I’ll say goodbye and mean it, 
how I’ll walk away and don’t dare look back. 
One day I hope to read your favourite book 
and think solely about the characters, 
the lettering, the love, but not you. Never you.

We tend to waste so much time existing in a state
of lamentation. Each second I decide to let you go,
to breathe space into love, to treat you like an ancient memory, is a victory. ❞


—— Contramonte, “Toward A Better Love”