#emotionsaseries

[zoexmarshall]

love

It’s scary, and you wish you could say you’ve never known the dark corridors and shut doors that line it, but it’d all be a lie. You know that door number one led to a tiny room with no windows. The wallpaper was tearing at the seams, falling down in sheets. It sucks because it looked really good on your iPhone when your friend sent you the picture, but you still stepped inside, anyway. You stayed there for awhile, even when it got smaller every day until you were pushed out, back into the hall, the door locking behind you. You opened door number two without a key at all, easily it flung open and it stayed that way. You smiled until you took a step forward to notice there was no floor. Some days you still have to stop yourself from looking over your shoulder at it. How bad could a fall like that be? Every time, you remember how your heart stopped, and it shakes you into looking straight ahead, except that one time at that party that we don’t talk about. It can be a terrifying place, but you had a night light as a kid; you learned that shadows are not monsters; the boogeyman might just need a friend. Oh, it can be petrifying! But maybe one day it’ll be exhilarating.

[leoxthorn]

love

It’s a place he knows he’s been to before, but looks nothing like how he left it. He never meant to return, but he missed the last exit and now he’s watching the reconstruction take place. The broken down gas station that only sold cigarettes and beer is being bulldozed, making space for a Starbucks. He’s never liked them, but makes a note to visit it as much as possible when it opens. It’s welcoming, in a cautious sense, the way it’s all jokes and laughs until you’re unable to turn back and leave. The chuckling echoes that bounce around are dying. The Starbucks is now open twenty-four hours a day. They grow to remember his order for two without a word.

[fabiancbishop]

love

It’s an internal civil war in its beginnings, an infection of rogue instinct that spreads out, treacherous to who he is. He is being threatened by something that seems to be out of his control, coming for his throat, tying up his tongue and laying it to rest in knots at the pit of it. The stomach quivers from bombings of canonfire, hurled through poorly constructed walls that tumble across enemy lines. In imminent surrender, the gentleman soldier offers his sword with little bloodshed on the one condition that the entire incident be stricken from the pages of history. The rolling fog of denial is unsustainable, though, and a new treaty is embarked on in the form of insufferable silence. He becomes a prisoner of war to his own unwanted feelings. The worm of love eats at his heart like a sour apple. He plans his escape to no avail. No one is happy. 

[sebastianxsteele]

love

It’s non-existent. He’s the product of self-propelled evolution, extinguishing the basis of the neurochemical processes that brings humanity to its weakest gorge. He retains clarity, becomes the sharpshooter of relationships, an assassin to attachments.

[axelxreeves]

love

It’s self-satisfying. It’s dominating. It’s being the last king on the chessboard first with the queen standing in the next square as second. It’s a means to succeed because he will. It’s consuming in only the way that devouring something is the same as conquering it. It’s on a trajectory to age badly. It rots, starting from the inside before working its way towards the outside. It claws at the edges, but it doesn’t break through to be seen by ever-greedy eyes, less greedy than his own. The decay pools and fills what otherwise would be hollow. He encrusts it with jewels, gilds it to a sparkling finish. The feeling parks itself in ownership, pulled together from an essence of loyalty that twists in the wind like cheap perfume: the scent lingers, but that scent becomes stench, rubbed off on others from sheer proximity.

[micahbates]

love

It’s in butterfly wings--little mechanical ones with wind-up gears and ball bearings that click neatly in place over and over, a melodic turning of flutters and twitches that are realistic enough to be considered alive because in their own world they are. They’re flush with excitement like any monarch would be, thrilled to beat themselves into flight, to fling themselves into the warmth of the sun, to spend what time they have as this creation in pure delight. Their wishes are innocent and harmless, and their lifespan is extended with every smile flickering in their direction.

[julianxsantiago]

love

It’s rooted in the core of his being, condensed and impenetrable, a diamond that has formed from the pressure of lifelong existence, forced into being instead of gently cultivated. He has no clear memory of its inception, only feels it protected by a rib cage made of steel and a thick layer of scarring from childhood that melds perfectly into the shape of a shield. It makes its presence known, too intense to bury, distilled from years of patience, centralized and guarded. There are rumors it doesn’t exist; the truth belongs to only one who chooses not to comment.

[calremington]

love

It’s the sensation closest to the tide coming home, as natural as the breath of the wind that tugs it along, splashing over the sand with reckless abandonment. He feels drenched by the waves, all encompassing without restriction, as free-floating as the sunlight that dances over the water. He becomes incapable of sinking, a buoy in the Mediterranean, melting into its scenery as the sea ebbs and flows. There are no reservations, no doubts; he gives himself entirely, drifting on fate and good fortune alone.