QUOTES ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS

I hope you read this, whoever you are, and imagine that there is a hypothetical person out there who needs your love, has been waiting silently, patiently for it all his life, is flawed and downright ugly at times and yet would have just eaten up any tiny bit of affection you had been willing to give, had you ever stopped your own happy life to notice. And then imagine that this hypothetical person is real, because he probably is.... Wish I’d met you. Wish I wasn’t your hypothetical. But you’re reading this, which means a few minutes ago, I went into that bathroom and pulled the trigger. You probably heard it. Sorry. You’re welcome. Thank you. And please. Please, please, please, please, please, please, please.

I could tell you of occasionally, every eon, meeting a person, with whom I might stay for a billion years. But what of it? After a billion years there is nothing left to say, and you wander apart, uncaring in the end.

He ran his fingers over the moist ends of her hair and across her face. Her eyes were wet. Jesus Christ. How many nights had he heard Lily crying. As some parents sleep through fire, thunderstorms, and voices at the back door only to wake at a child’s whisper, so Everett heard Lily crying at night. Her muffled sobs seemed to have broken his dreams for years. He had heard her even at Fort Lewis, even in Georgia, finally at Bliss. That was Lily crying in the wings whenever the priest came to tear up his mother’s grave. Lily cried in the twilight field where he picked wild poppies with Martha; Lily’s was the cry he heard those nights the kiln burned, the levee broke, the ranch went to nothing.

Couples will no longer spend their nights in their houses dedicated to habitation and reception, the customary social reason for banalization. The chamber of love will be more remote from the center of the city: it will completely naturally re-create for the partners the notion of ex-centricity, in a place less open to the light, more hidden, in order to return to the atmosphere of the secret. The contrary move, the search for a center of thought, will proceed by the same technique.

Three-Ring Circus by Stewart Stafford

First love's doubtless light,
Blinded with scorching might,
What little a cloudy eye allows,
Passion's seal on supple brows.

Resplendent in our united phase.
Love's incandesence in full blaze,
No one else existed, gazes locked,
Past emptiness, amnesia-blocked.

Now we pass on a muted, wintry street,
Joyless crime, sounds of splashing feet,
Pained awareness, eyes to the ground,
Mourners part bereft of sorrow's sound.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.

Your story is yours, every mistake, every heartbreak, every lesson. You don’t need anyone’s approval to tell it or to live it. They may judge, misunderstand, or walk away, and that’s ok, it wasn’t their path to walk. No one felt what you felt, no one carried what you carried. So live your story your way, unapologetically, honestly, and without looking back.

There is something between us that is still there and I know it will always be there.. You know the worst thing is, we both feel it even today but we behave like nothing ever happened. We talk like strangers, we have moved on like adults, but somewhere inside, we still carry pieces of each other... with unsaid love.. And it hurts to know that our connection survived… but we didn’t.