• "I would ask for his honeycomb lips, reddening like the setting sun, my eyes transixed on his form... / His song ploughs my heavy heart, he sings to awaken my fire.Enough, my love, drink from my mouth." - Judah HaLevi (gay spanish jewish poet)
• "What a voice that was: deep, sweet, with a shade of throatiness, full of passion." Nikos Kazantzakis, 'Report to Greco'
• "Against my body, Your body lay like a warm star" - Kenneth Rexroth 'Sacramental Acts: The Love Poems
• "…but really I just wanted to be the only one called honey, I wanted to be the word he kept in his throat." - Chelsea Hodson, from Tonight I’m Someone Else: Essays
• "I need your tenderness as a dying bird needs air. And when I eel lonely I need the sparkling laughter in your eyes." - Nika Turbina, First Draft: Poems
• "No human being has ever stood so close to my soul as you stand" - James Joyce, a letter to Nora Barnacle
• "“I think we deserve a soft epilogue, my love. We are good people and we’ve suffered enough.” - Nika Ursula
• "“all i really want our love to do is to bring out the best in me, and in you, too, i want to talk to you, i want to shampoo you, i want to renew you again and again.” - Joni Mitchell
• "Wouldn’t we tear / seas, /cities, /money /to get to /each other?" - Sarah Gambito, 'Grace'
• “Honey doesn’t decay as long as you keep water out of it: that’s why the ancients called it the food of immortality. Honey helps an open wound.” - Margaret Atwood 'The Year o the Flood"
• “Nothing is sweeter than love, all other riches second: even honey I’ve spat from my mouth.” - 'Sappho’s Lyre'
• "Do the stars sing?/ Yes./ In which language? /They sing in every language. Even the ones we don’t know." - David Lee, “While Walking (VII)” from So Quietly the Earth
• Give your heart and soul to me, And life will always be , La vie en rose - La Vie En Rose
• This is the first day of my life, I'm glad I didn't die before I met you, But now I don't care, I could go anywhere with you and I'd probably be happy - first day of my life, bright eyes
• The dream of my life, Is to lie down by a slow river, And stare at the light in the trees— /To learn something by being nothing, A little while… -Mary Oliver, from Devotions; “Entering the Kingdom"
• but—you can make life / out of nightfall, keeping your mouth soft/ palms open -S. Mardon,
• To love another is something / like prayer and can’t be planned, you just fall / into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief. -Anne Sexton, from The Complete Poems; “Admonitions to a Special Person,”
• Our touching, our stories. Earthy and holy both. How can this be, but it is. Every day has something in it whose name is Forever. -Mary Oliver, from Felicity; “Everything That Was Broken”
• “I promise I will love you as if it’s the only thing I’ve ever done correctly.” — Rudy Francisco, from Helium
• some days I think my only comfort is that there are more stars in the sky than moments that I’ve missed you, anytime you think of me, we’re thinking about each other at the same time; so much of what write begins with you, yet we still let dust settle as the beats that write chapters - you could know me only in the way rain forgets its weight - all at once, but the first half of all my dreams is finding you, the last half is trying not to let you go - anon
• I promise I will love you as if it’s the only thing I’ve ever done correctly. -Rudy Francisco, from Helium
• I go and go. To you, my beloved. - Paul Celan, tr. by Patrick Cotter, from Selected Poems; “Crowned Out,”
• “I am your moon and your moonlight too I am your flower garden and your water too I have come all this way, eager for you Without shoes or shawl I want you to laugh To kill all your worries To love you To nourish you.” — Rumi
• ‘love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? - James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
• Love is a tree with branches reaching into eternity and roots set deep in eternity,and no trunk! Have you seen it? The mind cannot. Your desiring cannot. The longing you feel for this love comes from inside you. - Rumi
• “It is three at night. I have something to say. You are so valuable. You shine out. You are a magic star. You are a body of blood made beautiful. How I admire, sit back and adore you. How thirsty I am for that. How you feed me.” — Anne Sexton, Letter to Lois Ames, 11 Jan. 1969
• "I do believe his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me like stars." — Richard Siken
• "I dreamt I drnk the color of your voice." - Evelyn Graham Frost
• "Of all flowers: you" — Kim Addonizio, from ‘You Were’
• "There’s a Japanese phrase that I like: koi no yokan. It doesn’t mean love at first sight. It’s closer to love at second sight. It’s the feeling when you meet someone that you’re going to fall in love with them. Maybe you don’t love them right away, but it’s inevitable that you will." - Nicola Yoon, The Sun Is Also a Star
• “ your belly the sun, sun in the water, sun-water in the earthen jar, sunflower seed I planted in my chest….” — Octavio Paz, from ‘A Tale of Two Gardens’,
• “…At night I dream that you and I are two plants that grew together, roots entwined” —Pablo Neruda
• “I still feel like the world is a piece of bread, I’m holding out half to you.” -eileen myle
• “I want to fill my mouth with your name. I want to eat you whole.” — Pablo Neruda
• “I walk around the cottage, touching things because you touched them. A book of Rilke. A plate that once had jelly on it. A hairbrush from which I have not yet removed the chestnut hairs. It’s a kind of sickness, isn’t it? An illness that has invaded me. Or rather the return of a chronic illness. This bout fatal, as I know it must be. I think that words corrupt and oxidize love. That it is better not to write of it. Even memory, I think, is full of rust and decay. I have always been faithful to you. If faithful means the experience against which everything else has been measured.” — Anita Shreve, The Last Time They Met
• "So I wait for you like a lonely house till you will see me again and live in me. Till then my windows ache." - Pablo Neruda
• "Your eyes aren’t eyes. They’re bees.

I can find no cure for their sting." — Landays of contemporary Afghanistan, Seamus Murphy

• “In a way, you are poetry material: You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality.” — Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena
• "You came, and I needed you, and you cooled the fever of longing that racked my

heart." - Sappho 48

• "did it take you long to find me? you’re here now, welcome home." -Warsan Shire
• "show me your face i crave flowers and gardens open your lips i crave the taste of honey" - Rumi, excerpt of How Long
• “your handwriting. the way you walk. which china pattern you choose. it’s all giving you away. everything you do shows your hand. everything is a self portrait. everything is a diary.” - chuck palahniuk
• "i know someone who kisses the way a flower opens, but more rapidly." - mary oliver
• "on sunny days i go out walking, i end up on a tree lined street, i look up at the gaps of sunlight, i miss you more than anything" - mitski
• "when you stood up, walked away barefoot and the grass where you lay left a bed in your shape, i looked over it and i ached" - mitski
• "I yearn for other places where I can see you. Grass where we might relax. A thirsty tongue for drinking and to call your name. I yearn for the night. I yearn for other doubts to fill my days and I yearn for you." - — Hassan Najmi, from “The Blueness of the Evening,”
• "You’ll never understand how much I love you because you sleep and are asleep in me." -Federico Garcia Lorca

"in daylight, every tree became you. And pretending, I kissed my way through the forest" -Marie Howe

• "I hold your hand with my eyes" -Ingeborg Bachmann