by Lauren Nickodemus
Photography: MUILLU on Unsplash
Artwork: Remi Jokiranta (PeacefulPirateNinja)
I love you with that painful, splitting love
the kind where cords are anchored deep
a barbed arrow into the heart
that grapples and pulls.
It’s not the kind of love that’s always pretty.
I’ve wept and fallen to pieces, in fact
and will again
cause what are we but humans?
Life shakes us, and we tremble.
But when I lie next to you in the dark
and hear the pumping of your blood
and smell the soft skin of your throat
a great swell rises
and I’m rent with love.
Never this safe
since I was a child in the fortress
of mother’s arms
I feel I could fold inside you
and rest in embryonic calm.
And I grasp at your skin as if
I could pull you into me –
the first to burst my chest with love so heavy
it presses tears out onto my cheeks.
I can’t part from you.
The cord is there, the seed, the nestled silver light
that glows out of me in beams
or shivers me so hard I cannot think.
A friend once told me, speaking of marriage
that the love of your life
will be able to hurt you more than anyone else
and now
I see at last what she meant.
You don’t just touch my heart, you live there.
A place has been carved out for you
and every light and darkness shining from you
shoots like fireworks
twinned beneath my ribs.
Lauren Nickodemus
Lauren Nickodemus is a writer, publisher and marketing assistant. She is the co-founder of indie publishing press Monstrous Regiment, which specialises in topics of feminism, gender, and sexuality. She has co-edited The Bi-ble: An Anthology of Essays and Personal Narratives about Bisexuality (available here) and is general co-editor of the upcoming Monstrous Regiment Magazine, a feminist lit mag which will release its first issue in June. Originally from Michigan, she moved to Scotland to pursue an MSc in Publishing and has since made Edinburgh home. She writes poetry and fiction in a variety of genres. Follow her publishing projects on Twitter @MonstrousRgmt or her everyday goings-on on Instagram @laurennicko_.
Remi Jokiranta (PeacefulPirateNinja)
Remi Jokiranta, aka PeacefulPirateNinja, is a 20-year-old psychology student from Finland currently studying in Edinburgh. They are very passionate about human rights (especially women’s and LGBTQIA+ rights) and animal rights and they advocate for these causes in many different ways (street activism, social media, art, etc.). They love to draw, paint and write poems. They’re also very passionate about self-love, addressing mental health issues and being inclusive to everyone.
