there is a long stretch of highway tonight, with shining headlights and you in a little box moving at 80mph on a road

that someone built a long time ago. but tonight that road belongs to you, it belongs to your cassette player and the cigarettes you will smoke at 80mph. you are speeding towards your destination, part of you wishes that you'd never get there, not that you want to die or anything, you just fucking love driving. there are other people at the destination, beautiful people that you want to spend time with. but in this car it is just you and the steering wheel and the pedals and the gearbox and the music you sing to. you are as fleeting as the smoke in this car, you can open the windows and let it out any time you choose, just like you could swerve slightly to the left and kill yourself and a family of four. you are in control, for the first time, for the only time, until the next time you make this box on wheels roll down the cement roads that connect each and every one of us.

THE INTENSE REGRET OF NOT TELLING YOU 'I LOVE YOU' BEFORE YOU LEFT
This is what it feels like to be in love, I think. I am listening to a song and it is making me think of you, the specifics of the song aren't necessary to the narrative of this story, just know that it's one of those lo-fi punk records that sounds highly reminiscent of a Ramones track, recorded in the basement of someone's parents house, somewhere in America. Last night I kept looking at you when you were touching me, all I wanted to do was say 'I love you'. Watching you staring at me so intensely, it took all of my strength to keep the words inside of my mouth. You look at me like I am the most interesting thing you've ever seen, like a piece of ancient rock in the Natural History Museum, I am rare to you. Sexual tension had been building between us for ~1 week, through misspelt sexts and distance and life on the road taking it's toll on you. It was no surprise that when I closed my bedroom door, your hands were instantly unbuttoning my shirt, pulling on my hair, squeezing the fat of my waist. In the morning, I had to go to university but I decided that I would rather spend the morning with you than nameless strangers in a clinical classroom. We sat in Starbucks for a while, you drank egg nog which made your mouth sweet against mine. There is an Instagram picture of us in my head, Nashville, me and you awkwardly kissing across a table. I want to tell you that I love you in the middle of this Starbucks, that I love you when egg nog clings to your moustache, that I love you when you say 'I bet I could write a poem' and then you write one on your phone and text it to me and it's the sweetest thing I have ever read. 'I hate you', I say as you stare at me, confused. 'I hate you because you're going to make me miss you.' You smile at me, crooked smile, straight teeth, you look beautiful and I just keep thinking about how lucky I am to have someone like you. You are without baggage, and I'm fucking Judy Garland, I'm just waiting for my prescription pill addiction darling. I will write all of these things about you, words and words and words are squirting out of me (it's the only thing that will, stop trying). Every miniscule aspect of our relationship will be typed out, as if it is was the most important event either of us had every been involved in. Like how you love it when I put my hands behind my head and show you my body when I'm on top of you, or how just thinking about the look on your face when I did that, is making me feel awkwardly aroused in the middle of Starbucks. I will not write an erotic story about you. I will romanticise everything about you, and if we ever break up I will re-read this and think, 'fuck, you were such a sickeningly romantic idiot in the winter of 2012'. I keep listening and reading to interviews with writers who's work I respect. I think I'm doing this to put off actually writing something of my own, although I find it interesting to hear them talk about their artistic and creative process. But I just feel like shit really because instead of writing something generally considered 'of worth', I'm just writing these drabble pieces that always seem to be about you. And I think this is because I love you, and this is your brain on love. My brain on love is telling me that it's okay if everything is about you, it's okay if I'm listening to a Marlene Dietrich song sung entirely in French (of which I do not speak) and still thinking 'fuck, this song reminds me of him'. I keep thinking, someone needs to come and put me back into misery because I am truly too happy to be able to write. Then I think this is just a bullshit cop out, you can't call yourself a writer unless you actually write something, regardless of your emotional state. I don't know if I'm a writer, I know I enjoy writing, I know that recently I have been writing more or less every single day, but I don't know if this is what I am as a person. Who even knows who they are as a person anyway? I think that anyone that does is probably lying, believe me, I've tried to get to know myself. I've read Alan Watts, I've had 'the talk' with myself, you know, the one where you ask yourself questions like 'where will you be in ~5 years time?'. I have no answers. There is only one thing I know right now, and that's the intense regret of not telling you I love you before you left. Well, I just keep thinking about having sex with you and I'm still in Starbucks ~3hrs later. I am going to leave soon, go home, lay in my bed and eat some ice cream, I'll probably press my nose against every surface your body touched last night. I can see you in my head and you are on top of me, and then I am on top of you and it's not difficult, and I'm letting you see me, this is the most confident I have ever been when I'm with you. Quite often I find myself being sickened with my own body, but I don't give a fuck when I'm with you and you're kissing me by candle light saying, 'this is the most romantic experience of my life' and I agree, it's always romantic when I'm with you. There are a lot of things I want to do with you, a lot of things I want to feel and experience and so many places where I just want to hold your hand. There are so many ways I want to tell you I love you and I will one day but not now.

Before our first date I wrote a poem entitled 'oh shit, oh shit, oh shit', here is another, better poem about you. You will be a book soon enough.
Our relationship is already being documented poetically, on a number of word documents I think that if you knew how many words I typed out words that have been placed together to convey my feelings towards you, you would get slightly scared or angry because 'damn this dyslexia' I am not doing this to scare you, I promise there is just a compulsion to write about how in a certain light, in a certain shopping centre in the middle of Southampton you looked just like Ryan Gosling and how I thought 'holy shit, I'm the luckiest girl' when I kissed you I want to tell the world about how I kissed you in a bowling alley, or under neon lights and a video of someone getting massaged I want them to know that you smiled at me and said, let's get a massage and I laughed at you and pushed your face away from me. So I'm writing about you again, thinking hard about minute details and interactions, like how angry you get when I eat all of the cheese from a slice of pizza or how our first time was you saying 'shall I get the JLS condom?' and how my mum walked in on us, completely killing the mood.

TELL ME MORE ABOUT WHAT YOU'D DO TO ME IN YOUR CAR

This situation is getting out of fucking control, you said to me as we drove in your car, en route to get milkshakes just because it was a Sunday night and there was nothing else to do. There is a song on the radio that I don't understand, the sounds are too complex or something, the lyrics aren't making sense to me. 'What situation?' I ask you, my eyes facing forwards, looking at the empty street and all the houses with their lights on and all the happy people inside the houses. 'This situation', a wild left hand gesture, the other is on the steering wheel, 'I like you so much I just don't know what to be any more.' I smile and tell you to be yourself, my hand is on your knee now and I am looking at you. You look fuckable speeding past street lights, your curly hair escaping from underneath the hat you put on it in a taming gesture. 'Remember that text message I sent you in November?' I ask, licking my lips, puckering them at your nose ring. 'The one that said, tell me more about what you'd do to me in your car?' I clarify. You nod at me and bite your lip and I think for just a few seconds about how good a lip ring would look there. Then you would be a nose ring, an earring and a lip ring, and I would be your piercing free girlfriend with a band tattoo on her right wrist, cool. 'Let's do them,' I say, and I'm thinking, let's do them after we've drunk milkshakes, in the parking lot of McDonalds the Sunday before Christmas. Let's do all of those things and let's shake the car until the milkshakes explode and cover us in a sticky strawberry sludge. 'Do you know that they put potatoes in these?' you smile at me with a straw in your mouth. We are sitting in the parking lot now, excited to touch each other, enjoying these few moments we get to spend together, away from other people. I laugh at you because I did know, and you're not the first person to tell me. We spend the night fucking in the back of your car, in the darkest part of a McDonalds parking lot. This is the best Christmas I have ever had, I tell you as you lay on top of me in a scene reminiscent of the eighties romantic comedy 'Say Anything'. You kiss me with an overwhelming force, projecting your entire being into my mouth through your lips. There is steam on the windows and you lean over and write, 'I love heart you'. I think I'm going to shit myself for exactly ~10 seconds but then I realise that I love you too and I won't let me sabotage this for myself. I will let myself be happy when I am with you, and I will let you fuck me in an empty McDonalds parking lot, and I will kiss you when you tell me that you love me, and I will tell you that I love you too because I do.

FOR THE TENTH TIME, NO, I DON'T PLAY MINECRAFT

I spent most of today watching Boardwalk Empire in my underwear I put pants on to make dinner (beans and sweet potato fries, I instagramed it) every day is exactly the same I said I wouldn't make one person my whole life and just like everything I say, what a lie he built me a light house on Minecraft feel like saying something like 'he is my god damn light house' and that would probably be true but it just seems like something so stupid to say. I like Wu Tang Clan but not like, religiously I keep thinking about all the normal dads in the world that have t-shirts with the Wu Tang logo on and if they actually like Wu Tang Clan right now, i'm going to say that they don't but shout out to those dad's anyway my life has gotten to a point in which I check Facebook at every moment of every day I was watching Boardwalk Empire and I paused the episode to check my notifications I swear, I need to disable the notifications from all these groups but it will be sad/disheartening to wake up to less than 40 notifications each morning Steve Buscemi's eyes are so odd, does everyone know about this? All I can think about is you counting the days until I see you again fuck it is 4.18am and I want to kiss you in the light house you built for me on Minecraft.

'a partially completed hand job with my best friend's best friend'
I wake up in pants, tights and love bites kissing you makes me want to believe this world has some kind of meaning that it isn't just an absurdist illusion I want to dance with you on this dry water fountain the dance ends with a sprained ankle I ask you to take me on an adventure you whisper in my ear that my skin is 'so soft' later on, on facebook you ask me if I bit your ear because it hurts you have inspired words out of me I wish I could have fucked all the nice words in the dictionary out of you seems like it could have been fun but instead all you got was nervous friction a wine fuelled one-night romance in a hotel room the room that gave me insect bites on my legs and love bites on my neck you rubbed your fingers on my lips your nose ring shone in the black I woke up and my eyelashes had fallen off and I was bra-less and without class in a hotel room with a strange boy seems like this kind of thing probably happens to you all the time and yes, I agree that ending up in a hotel room 5 minutes from your house was pretty funny I can't even remember if you finished yourself off in the toilet it felt too awkward to put my mouth on that part of your body too intimate and I liked you too much in that moment to embrace you so easily we smoked some guys pot in the basement of a house party you kept saying I was cool but I don't think you were serious all I can think about is how much of a good kisser you were and how far away you are from me and how much I wish you lived two houses down so we could get drunk together everyday and end up in hotel rooms watching early morning cartoons and lying in awkwardness you wanted to hold me in the morning, I think but the wine clung to my breath and I felt ugly without my eyelashes I wanted to lay with you alcohol and bad breath lingered in the air but you were salient or perhaps you were just a boy with an oddly beautiful face who made me think there could be some kind of meaning in the world beyond an accidental clashing of personalities, lips and teeth for just a few drunken hours you added me on facebook back in march out of the blue and unannounced and then october came and you existed in my reality and your tongue was in my throat and your hands were in my hair you were right in front of me being a person that others gravitate to and this is starting to sound like a love poem but it's not because I don't love you even if I have been watching your online presence with the eyes of a predator since Saturday night you will forever exist in a hotel room in an unfamiliar town in a basement and a garden and a living room of a friend's house party you will always be that boy I almost slept with you will always be a shiny nose ring and teeth on skin and the love bite on my neck that I nervously hide from prying eyes on the train home.

These are places I want to kiss you, songs I want to kiss you to in these places, in no particular order:
In the middle of a corn field, inspiring instrumental orchestra music in the background, lying on our backs looking at the sky, 'it's almost as blue as your eyes' you will say. On the dance-floor of a 70's themed nightclub, possibly named 'Copa Cabana' or something else vaguely kitsch and predictable. There are palm trees indoors and you kiss me underneath a disco ball, the light is bouncing off your nose ring. We are dancing to the Bee Gees I think, 'Night Fever'. Your arms are around my waist and mine are around your neck and you like it when I pull you in closer, you like it when our teeth clash, you like it when I bite your lip. I am swaying with you,drunk on cream based, tropical cocktails. We are kissing now.. Feels good. In a dive bar, Nashville, 'Suspicious Minds'. You say, 'I hope our relationship doesn't end like Elvis and Priscilla' and I say, 'baby, I would never make a theme park out of you'. The bartender looks pissed because we're sitting at the bar and we are kissing each other. We don't care. I keep thinking about how they always tell you not to eat the peanuts at the bar, but I eat them anyway because when I'm with you, I don't think about the consequences. Somewhere in Nevada, away from everything, 3am., 'Sweet Jane', the version from the Natural Born Killers movie, we are sitting in your car with the windows down and I am smoking a cigarette. I keep wanting to say 'I love you' but I'm too scared, you look like you want me to say it, like you are reading my mind and you know the thought is there and you're trying desperately to harness any telepathic skill you have to tell me 'just fucking say it'. We just end up making out in the back of your car with the radio up loud and the windows are still down. A coyote or something is howling, but all I can hear is our spit intertwining. Austin, Texas. 'Put Some Sugar On It', an independent bookstore/coffee shop/art gallery. We are drinking coffee and you have the worst coffee breath, I tell you this and you look at me through...fuck, I just forgot the colour of your eyes and had to check your Facebook profile picture. I think they are kind of a blue/grey. Anyway. You're wearing a checked shirt and a band t-shirt just like everyone else, and you really fit in here, even if you don't read and you're into this hardcore punk music instead of Half Japanese. We are kissing and it's nice because you have sugar on your lips through that pastry you just ate. You taste like fucking candy, let me eat you. Venice Beach, Los Angeles. 'Right Here', a sweet song that makes me think about you a lot. We're both on rollerblades and I'm not scared any more because your hand is in mine and...'I'm keeping you right here'. The sun is hot on my legs because I'm wearing shorts, so are you, we are both wearing shorts and hawaian t-shirts and I keep thinking, 'this is what it's like to be in love with someone really'. You look delectable in Ray Bans, and wow, this tropical backdrop just fits you so well. I have sand in my underwear and I don't give a fuck, you're kissing me and pushing me further into the sand. Love Angeles, 2012, listening to the Go-Betweens. Underneath the Eiffel tower, 11pm on a Saturday night. 'Growing Up'. It's supposed to be romantic but there's a god damn woman in gypsy attire trying to sell us some souvenirs that neither of us are interested in. She then pulls out a rose, you buy it for me and I laugh because this is ridiculously clichd, only in the movies they tend not to show you the police officers that walk in circles holding machine guns. Feels weird to listen to Bruce Springsteen in Paris, but the tower is glittering now and your hand is freezing cold in mine.

At night I look at the Eiffel tower whilst we have sex in a hotel bed, then I look at you and you are the Eiffel tower, a glittering monument that sparkles through the sky, you are every love letter that has ever been sent, you are every single romantic scenario I have ever imagined.

Christmas Poem
Being with you is a child on christmas eve itchy jumpers and feeling too hot indoors blues hands, the sudden urge to eat mince pies the realisation that you dont really like anything about mince pies except the pastry when I am with you everything feels like christmas in new york city snow under my boots, the song christmas (baby please come) by darlene love there is mistletoe everywhere when I am with you I will kiss you on the corner of every street in new york city I will dance with you on a giant piano in a department store somewhere in new york city you are the anticipation of christmas day the condensation on my window kissing you is like watching home alone on christmas eve my lips will meet yours in a room decorated entirely in tinsel you have invisible misteltoe above your head every single day and only I can see it I want to kiss you for the entire month of December through chapped lips and a Rudolph nose this month is a candle whos scent is snow in love I really cant wait to kiss you under silver lights in the middle of London December is the best time to hold your hand to see you in scarves and hats and second hand jumpers to lay next to you in the snow and know that the shape of our bodies will stay there hours after we are gone Christmas will be trains and buses distance, phone calls, text messages about movies starring Bill Murray when I am walking with you, you will say wow, the air is white and I will make my hands really cold and put them on your stomach I am glad I met you in the winter I could stand next to you in a field watching fireworks steam rising from mulled wine soft hands holding on to each other as the lights explode in the sky I am happier than a parent-less Macaulay Culkin when I am with you you are the month of December when you are with me.

My boyfriend hates Skylar White on Breaking Bad, and although I can admit her flaws, I am unwilling to perceive her as an ultimately 'bad' character. I only started watching Breaking Bad because everyone else did. I'm still trying to figure out if this makes me a good/bad person. Why do men always hate the female characters in TV shows anyway?

DOWNLOAD FRIENDS ONLINE FOR FREE (NOT THE TV SHOW)

I want the world to end the next time I see someone really beautiful I want to wake up tomorrow and the world will be in a state of war and I won't have to go to work my mum is still crying and it's been 2 days now I taped a really good documentary last night about birds and I am going to watch it later on today if I fall asleep early tonight does that mean I will feel less tired tomorrow what if I wake up early and then the entire plan just messes up why isn't life simple and simple and simple everything feels repetitive I feel like I'm losing friends or the will to have any friends today I went outside to buy eggs and the man who sold me the eggs told me they were very fresh I used those eggs to make brownies someone save me from myself I think I'm going to hurt someone because the brownies turned out bad this is probably why I feel like I am losing friends I keep thinking about what I have to do tomorrow and that is stopping me from enjoying what I am doing now I want to freeze time and stay like this forever just sitting here staring at the wall I feel complacent and confused and all of the above is real all of the above is crashing together to make me a person that is both comfortable and uncomfortable simultaneously how do you stop writing a poem I don't want to go to work tomorrow.

Emily is 23. Emily finds it weird that everyone writes about themselves in the third person at the end of their own e-book. Emily is going to carry on writing about herself in the third person because she rarely has an original thought ever. Facebook.com/abandon.all.hope emily.louise.church@hotmail.co.uk