This Love Was Ours

i loved you, back then
but now the love tastes bitter and scalded
i still think of you, all the time
of the days back when you were Mine

because there was a time,
when i used to run around Fearless,
knowing what we had was a perfect little
Love Story

your Starlight shined to me
and although i still remain Invisible to you
i’ll still forever adore you,
although your State of Grace has now fallen

i wanted you to stay forever sixteen,
i wanted you to Never Grow Up
i wanted you to Stay
Stay, Stay

The Way I Loved You was intense,
and so, so easy; Untouchable,
but jealousy has spiralled in and out,
and out of my control

you comforted a girl whose world had been shattered
around her by divorce, depression
and instability
you allowed her to Breathe

now i’m stuck, stuck on The Outside
where it’s bitter and cold
Treacherous, even
Everything Has Changed

so Long Live
those times I used to share with you
because they’re not my own anymore
and they were truly The Best Day(s)

And when I think Tim McGraw,
yes
of course
I do think of you

Writing About People

I’ve realised that, as a writer, I love to explore relationships. Romantic relationships. Whether it’s an old married couple who seem to have lost each other along the way in their relationship, or if it’s a young teenage couple, who have nothing better to do than wander the streets in the dark, alone with the stars and streetlamps for company.

Finding what fits and how things have become broken inside the delicate structure of a romantic relationship that doesn’t stand so rigid anymore is what fascinates me.

Lately, I’ve found that certain events in my life have sharpened my senses to real relationships, to people, and to how almost anything can hold potential for a new romance to blossom. Say I hit someone with my car or the postman accidentally delivers a parcel to the wrong address – this could equal romance if it were a fictional world. I’m trying to use this.

Anything can happen in fiction. But what’s probably more jolting is anything can happen in reality too. Like, really bad things. But that’s okay and I will be okay. Because music is here and writing is here too.

What I’ve been listening to lately has been Ed Sheeran’s song ‘Photograph’. What I personally love about it is that it’s so much about being in love, feeling it and breathing it, and so I really identify with this. I think music has the ability to make you become part of another world and, for me, that largely gives me the ability to write and just to feel something when I write. Writing teen fiction deals with a lot of feelings and, almost always, with love. Heartbreak, lust, loss, and all that kind of emotional stuff that nobody wants to deal with after they’re a teenager – because it just hurts too much.

As well as that, I love that by writing teen fiction I get to second-handedly experience these emotions that my characters will go through and I’ll get to grow with them, passing on to them my own experiences and they’ll let me be a part of theirs too.

Writing about love, in all shapes and sizes, seems to be the only thing that matters right now. I just love the way it feels.