His is an enlarged heart untrammelled by human concerns. Hers is a rose that fervently wishes it held less bloodied thorns.

He has said “I love you” and she has offered nothing more than impatient gratitude. He has clasped her hand to his chest and felt her taper, melting away from the idea of him.

There are four slate-coloured walls, one kind German teacher obsessed with the dative case and a teenager decanting her feelings into a hurriedly scrawled note.

I can’t right now. I’m sorry. I hope we can still be friends.

Words feel flat and flabby like how a sloppy exercise offends the rules of grammar.

Her eyes flit to the whiteboard where conjugation has started, her fingers pry her pencil case open. She reads his words again and fears being corralled by love. She fears the carnage in the chaos.

Don’t let in danger

like a troubling truncheon of rain

fretting at the coast.

Express it by casting a whisper

Tell me truly without raising an octave or stealing a stave

Allow insignificance to chaînér to the floor.

It’s classic him not wanting her to let the world plagiarise her greatness and/or their happiness forever after.

She’s in double physics when she sees him outside the window tearing her words to confetti-sized shreds. She’s training her neighbour’s poodle to shake her hand when she hears from local radio that there’s a siege-type scenario unfolding across town. She’s cramping in the cold air of her loneliness when the tinsel falls from the giving tree. She’s grating hard cheese for the tetchy toddler she sits for when they announce that one person has lost their life. She’s sieving her mind for the ripest memories and/or a logical reason. She’s forgetting if she meant to say goodbye.