Reverie Velvet
POEMS ON LOVE
BY EMILY WINGFIELD
Velvet Reverie is a collection of love poems I’ve written over the years, a reflection of the ways love can be both breathtakingly beautiful and deeply painful. Love is one of the most powerful forces we experience it softens us, shapes us, and sometimes breaks us. February, the month of love, felt like the perfect time to share these pieces, each one capturing moments of tenderness, longing, joy, and heartbreak. Writing has been my way of navigating the complexities of love, of putting words to feelings too big to hold. This collection is a glimpse into that journey soft, intense, and endlessly alive.
the difference there was always a difference between what we wanted and what we felt when healing was too far gone and i couldn’t wait any longer but i understood.
i understood you like how i understood books in english class just enough to realize their complexity their stunning brokenness six months of almost loving you
but i reminded myself of the difference of what you said and what you meant when you’d shut it off without hesitation that’s the half that hurts. i swear that i’m not mad at you, but i can’t share your bed now. because the difference is too much of a shame and i was the collateral damaged goods of a man who finally got better but, still, never been less empty, all i feel is free now.
ars poetica
i am only one thing in love and loving and hurting just the same
poems mean nothing unless they are broken like the way the sun sets
what is it about love that embeds itself so by which i say i need
a poem is a promise a warning of the memory of checking the locks
anytime is enough time to not just seeing but knowing even more
a poem is salty tears and a runny nose the moment you forget.
strangers
sharing a cigarette with a stranger is a fast way to fall in love / and we find that death and life are what become us all / when our lips meet those of a stranger and we exchange deep breaths / i tried to be good, am i no good? / smoke clouds and the sticky beer coated concrete floors / this is where i would like to find myself / i just wanted to be yours, can i be yours? / baby brown eye euphoria / my memories are forever mine and i hope to share them with you / to engrave them in that delicate head of yours / frozen in a moment divine / found you just to tell you that i made it real far / mother forgive me for this is all i know / but it is all i will ever need / sharing cigarettes with strangers is both death and life combined.
the moon rose over a colder sea as i am taken with the animal of me gratitude to move as i intended to you. i miss you and the days we have yet to spend because i want to dive deep into you build a community garden of our bookshelves discussing metaphors and imagery not for the sake of showing off intelligence but for love beneath the candle moon. my love is cradling the milky way and flowing down the back of my throat. i swallow the feelings i wish i could say and this is the only way i know how to live for me hopelessly in desire weightlessly.
// let me come back. let me move like the moon. over a sea and finding my way to you.
former lovers at midnight when i’m sitting on the porch and looking down onto the rain stained pavement fall upon these dreaming moments awoken by nothing but the mere sadness left behind in the wake of good love i thought was forever but i always let myself get too carried away in a fantasy of a white picket fence and a golden retriever blind to the reality of self-destruction and a yearning body midnights are lonely when my bed is made instead of sheets flown about you and me burning together but i promise you it’s never over and you will exist inside the soul of a lover i only tore apart forever so, maybe i’m too young to keep good love from going wrong i am sorry i could never see the pain i caused lover you lover me i hope it is not too late how long will i wait for you?
sad
sick savior (after “junk bond trader” by elliott smith)
if i were a boy my name would be elliott smith, who cuts me down to size and shoots me in the neck
not cycles but figure 8 feedback loops of sick thoughts caught behind devilish grins
keeping everything moving, everything static watch breakdowns into safes without keys
my darling, choke on boring drugs you take too regularly fold at the hips at the slightest touch of alcohol stained kisses
sell yourself while value still exists inside empty eyes of dead girls buried in my backyard
beyond just junk bond traders selling stocks to men in suits with wrinkled sleeves and holes to forgiveness
you once told me my world wasn’t wider than my hatred of yours and saying fuck you only to let you kiss me once again
while i hit your chest and scream in cries for needing more from you not having room in overhead cabinets for my emotional baggage
detonate the buildings brick by brick ignore civilians inside, necessary casualties
happy holidays to lovers you carry inside backpacks filled with doses of the rubble
i don’t want anything else but myself and a remedy for being everything i was supposed to
lost you underneath the table i left the keys hitchhiker you laugh at from your car window
we were meant to collapse together and now i do it myself.
sappho would be proud of me
i am always left wanting more of you you and i asking questions of why and what are we doing here to an earth with soil etched for nowhere but here we can agree on this: overwhelming ecstasy at a party and saturated with bedroom pop anthems of a pretty girl in a skirt hair glowing in the sun take me to another place and run away and never return the full time job of sapphic yearning of craving the love of a woman imperative because a fundamental part of being queer is being erased and forgotten beneath the stars in my dreams i always feel at home, with you of loving you, an eternal quarrel with the impossible and all i want to do is kiss your strawberry soft lips and know this divulgence of the flesh is true and right.
you, in front of me, with bundles of flowers
i am taken with the promise i made, to you, an unspoken vow of gratitude and pray my heart moves as i intend, though, but i do not know the weight of your heart.
who am i, darling, to you?
i imagine you, in front of me, with bundles of flowers to be caught in a burden of time and distance. on the rooftop: mostly buried in wonder, you with the desire of growing lilies.
who am i, darling, for you?
is this when i should say to myself, alone in bed “i am in love.” i shout as a winter howl must i remain alone or am i in love? with telling stories of dreams are you in love?
where obsession meets infatuation and i think it means i’m falling in love (after “punisher” by phoebe bridgers)
the slender space between obsession and falling in love
no difference really, between the platonic premonitions or the tenderness of this raw attraction, how it formed next to scabbed knees and late night bruises.
i know i’m in trouble when i start creating memories that don’t belong only to me or the way i take your face as mine but the way you look at me as holy as this city where i met you.
what if i told you, i feel like i know you?
when i call her in the mornings my therapist calls it mania,
but i call it where obsession meets infatuation and i think it means i’m falling in love because there must be a place where it means more. over and over again i’ll cherish these spiritual moments, as they are the only way they’re supposed to ever be.
amorphous and fluid and wrapping themselves around me like a noose.
wouldn’t know where to start, wouldn’t know when to stop.