Letters to Lost Lovers & Other Stories

By Laurel Dime

A collection of poetry and short stories. It is an assemblage of scenes from the life of a girl and then woman as she encounters a range of perspectives on romantic relationships, navigates through a series of romantic relationships and find herself loved, challenged and distraught at various times, as mu

• Language: English
• Publisher: BlueBird Publishing
• Release date: Jul 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9780645849004

Laurel Dime

Laurel Dime has recently published her first book, Letters to Lost Lovers & Other Stories, a collection of poems and short stories about various romantic entanglements of the protagonist.

Book preview

WHOSE BODY AM I?

What does it mean that my body

Became your escape from your own emotions

A sentence staller

Topic aborter

A thing to fill the gaps where words

Floundered

Something that had always been there and always would be

Yours

To reach out to hold and feel the soft current of my pulse

All of me a fleshy invitation

It was overwhelming.

Even for me.

I wanted to be in the place of shuddering joy

And limitless expanse

That meant I could float above everything that made living impossible

Whilst your soft curves were my landscape of familiarity

But over time the length of my limbs became a wall that enlarged the space between us

Through some trick of mind that I succumbed to every time

In the confusion mistaking

The needful thrusts of your body with earnest attempts to reach back to a time when things felt right

Your open-mouthed gaze taking all of me in, but not really seeing.

And my own warm glow became an illusion of timelessness:

Nothing had changed.

This moment was the same moment

As the one years back

Mid-afternoon

When all we had ahead of us

Was possibility and adventure.

You didn’t tell me what was going on.

You sealed yourself up like a black box packaged with secrets and trains of thoughts I could only see flickers of

You didn’t want me to know

In part because you felt that placing what was difficult onto the highest shelf of your mind

Was an act of chivalry

In part because your concept of me as free and delicate and perfect

Was a dream no one could take from you

And now I still don’t know

Which parts of me became your traumas

And for how long it will continue to be my duty

To walk the walk of my own existence whilst

Identifying, processing, managing, moulding, exorcising

The demons of your stutteringly articulated not-articulated

Pain

That has taken up residence in my bones.

BOYS HAVE WINKIES. GIRLS HAVE TINKIES.

My cousin and I sat squashed into the back of my aunt and uncle’s car, midday through a long road trip to their country home and slightly out of earshot of her parents towards the front.

My cousin, in her primary school years, was always boisterous and confident beyond her age, excited about what lay ahead in her life.

She attended a posh school in London but brought a sense of adventure to her daily experiences that had possibly been nurtured through frequent holidays back to South Africa for family Christmases at the beach, hiking trails through the Cederberg, and jeep trips through wilderness parks.

At the time of my visit, she was nearing the end of primary school, and I was midway through high school. Despite our age gap, my