Not Really A Poster

I thought I loved.

I thought my laugh was songs of happiness; that my tears carved little rivers, and my bones rattled in cold winds. Every utterance from my utmost kissable lips a growled need, my presence towering, and my eyes an ocean of mystery waiting to be explored.

I thought I existed.

But I understand now. As I watch the parts of my world fade a little more with each passing. Exposed roots of looming trees, where I shiver the chill of loss, begin to sink onto the dimming of the earth. The world is quiet. Still. Cranes no longer sail in cloudy seas, and crickets lack the strength to serenade lovers they never found.

I do not live.

I am nothing but paper; cut into a shape pleasing for an audience I will never hear. I exist only within the confines of a fictional world. Ink races in my veins, thumping wildly a heart that beats not for my star-crossed love, but for you. Any of you. All of you.

Readers grant me a soul.

My voice may change within each mind, and my intent but a fleeting guess of subtext, but for you I am alive. I am cherished. I am judged by actions never my own. Sentenced for the crimes of disappointment.

But now, it seems, at long last, I am to be executed.

An abandoned tale.

Forgotten and unfinished.

Without thought I cannot think. Without care I cannot feel. Without life I cannot live.

Without you I cannot be.

But... Did I ever exist at all? Did I ever laugh, or bleed? Or was that only how you perceived me? Paper is real, so too does that make me? Are readers not simply the cells they were printed on? Is life not simply a story? Is imagination not the means of creation?

A vision.

A dream.

What am I? A description? A mistake of muses? A cry for attention from an author too lonely to stay quiet, but too shy to make friends? Is this my true destiny, to fade on the page under the absence of attention, rather than discover my true ending from a chapter.

(  dialogue  prompts  taken  from  quotes  of  various  f.  scott  fitzgerald  works.  feel  free  to  edit  as  you  seem  fit.  )

❛ you are afraid of being in love then? ❜

❛ i’ll kiss you if you want me to. ❜

❛ we’ll survive, you and i. ❜

❛ come and kiss me and let’s forget. ❜

❛ hard to sit here and be close to you, and not kiss you. ❜

❛ i’m not used to being loved. i wouldn’t know what to do. ❜

❛ sometimes i don’t know whether we are real or whether we are characters in one of my novels. ❜

❛ wouldn’t it be awful if we fell in love again? ❜

❛ i’m yours - you know it. ❜

❛ you’ve a place in my heart no one else ever could have. ❜

❛ books mean more than people to me anyway. ❜

❛ you’ve got an awfully kissable mouth. ❜

❛ i won’t forget you. i will promise to remember you always. ❜

❛ if i wait till i fall in love again i’ll just wait forever. ❜

❛ things you’ve just said and forgotten, i’ve put myself asleep night after night remembering. ❜

❛ love isn’t like it is in books. ❜

❛ i’m telling you all of a sudden, but it isn’t new with me. i love you. ❜

❛ i keep the light burning on your desk so i’ll think you’re there when i wake up. ❜

❛ the odd thing is that i’m in love with you anyhow. ❜

❛ won’t you let me lean against your shoulder just the smallest bit? ❜

❛ it’s been very rare to have known you, very strange and wonderful. ❜

❛ it’s sweeter to be alone. ❜

❛ if you’re tired of kissing me, i’d better go. ❜

❛ i’ve formed the habit of liking you. ❜

❛ there’s something between us- a sort of pull. something you always do to me and i to you. ❜

❛ i won’t have to build my love up. it’s up in the skies now. ❜

❛ you’re trying to leave yourself behind, but you can’t. the more you try to run away from yourself, the more you’ll have yourself with you. ❜

❛ i’m sorry i had such a devastating effect on you. ❜

❛ i forgot everything. your lips were so beautiful. ❜

❛ say you love me. say it now — can’t you say it now? even if you don’t mean it? ❜

❛ i still love you. that’s the odd thing. ❜

❛ my god, you’re fun to kiss. ❜

❛ i wouldn’t change you for the world. ❜

❛ it’s all so simple. he loved me and i loved him. that’s all there is. ❜

❛ you’ve fallen for me — completely. you’ve got me in your dreams. ❜

❛ tonight there’s got to be no past or future, no time, just tonight, you and i. ❜

❛ of course you could never love anybody but me. ❜

❛ i’m a lost soul maybe — i don’t feel at all like i ought to feel. ❜

❛ i fell in love with you the first time i saw you. ❜

❛ in my heart i love her all the time. ❜

❛ and what in hell could we ever be to each other? ❜

❛ i realized what was the matter, what had always been the matter — i was deeply and incurably in love with her. ❜

❛ i’m more beautiful than anybody else, why can’t i be happy? ❜

❛ you intoxicated me. it was just as though you were making me love you by some invisible force. ❜

❛ it’s because i love you, dear— ❜

❛ i once imagined you loved me a little bit, if you’ll excuse the presumption. ❜

❛ i loved you once — for a year i thought you were the only person in the world. ❜

❛ sometimes you think you’re so much in love that your love could fill the biggest palace conceivable. sometimes you haven’t got enough to fill one room. ❜

❛ his dark eyes took me in, and i wondered what they would look like if he fell in love. ❜