u/Leelea27

Please recommend good book with romance, fantasy, triangles/bad boy powerful man/beast but I prefer if they are written in first person POV. Thank you 📚

“I’m sorry,” the letter said,

“I hope one day you’ll forgive me instead.

Something changed, I had to go,

I love you still, but not enough so.

I took my things, I left the key,

don’t search these empty rooms for me.

I hope you find a better light,

someone who loves you the way that’s right.

He held that paper in his hand,

as if the words he could not understand.

He read it once, then read again,

repeating the same pain.

How could she leave, how could she go,

if he had made her coffee slow?

The same small cup, the same old way

how could love just leave one day?

He looked around the silent place,

and slowly noticed every space.

The books were gone, the chair, the plant,

all the little things taken by wave of a hand .

Her pillow soft, her toothbrush too,

her perfume gone, no trace of you.

The empty rooms, the quiet floor

he knew she wasn’t there anymore.

Yesterday, she kissed me still

how can love leave, how can it kill?

Why no words, why no last fight?

Why does goodbye come overnight?

“I love you, but this isn’t right.”

Those words kept burning through the night.

Four years together, was that so small?

Did she mean there is nothing there at all?

“Goodbye.”

That word cut like a knife,

slowly tearing through his life.

Sadness turned itself to rage,

love became a darker cage.

He cursed her name, then missed her more,

his heart kept fighting with that war.

Love turned to hate, hate back to flame,

and nothing inside him stayed the same.

He washed his face with water cold,

to calm the pain he could not hold.

Then found one cigarette alone,

though smoking was a life long gone.

It brought him back to younger days,

schoolyard smoke and laughing haze.

When love was easy, young, and bright,

and forever felt soft and right.

He stepped outside, the seventh floor,

with memories standing at the door.

He lit the flame, he watched it burn,

already knowing there is no return.

Then the apartment door swung wide,

and there she stood, with tears to hide.

She came back late, she searched each room, but only found the silent gloom.

The kitchen, bedroom, empty air,

the bathroom too, he wasn’t there.

She stepped outside, her body weak,

and saw the ashtray by the seat.

A half-burned cigarette, still warm

and then she knew

through tears and storm,

his goodbye meant 

he was forever gone.

“I’m sorry,” the letter said,

“I hope one day you’ll forgive me instead.

Something changed, I had to go,

I love you still, but not enough so.

I took my things, I left the key,

don’t search these empty rooms for me.

I hope you find a better light,

someone who loves you the way that’s right.

He held that paper in his hand,

as if the words he could not understand.

He read it once, then read again,

repeating the same pain.

How could she leave, how could she go,

if he had made her coffee slow?

The same small cup, the same old way

how could love just leave one day?

He looked around the silent place,

and slowly noticed every space.

The books were gone, the chair, the plant,

all the little things taken by wave of a hand .

Her pillow soft, her toothbrush too,

her perfume gone, no trace of you.

The empty rooms, the quiet floor

he knew she wasn’t there anymore.

Yesterday, she kissed me still

how can love leave, how can it kill?

Why no words, why no last fight?

Why does goodbye come overnight?

“I love you, but this isn’t right.”

Those words kept burning through the night.

Four years together, was that so small?

Did she mean there is nothing there at all?

“Goodbye.”

That word cut like a knife,

slowly tearing through his life.

Sadness turned itself to rage,

love became a darker cage.

He cursed her name, then missed her more,

his heart kept fighting with that war.

Love turned to hate, hate back to flame,

and nothing inside him stayed the same.

He washed his face with water cold,

to calm the pain he could not hold.

Then found one cigarette alone,

though smoking was a life long gone.

It brought him back to younger days,

schoolyard smoke and laughing haze.

When love was easy, young, and bright,

and forever felt soft and right.

He stepped outside, the seventh floor,

with memories standing at the door.

He lit the flame, he watched it burn,

already knowing there is no return.

Then the apartment door swung wide,

and there she stood, with tears to hide.

She came back late, she searched each room, but only found the silent gloom.

The kitchen, bedroom, empty air,

the bathroom too, he wasn’t there.

She stepped outside, her body weak,

and saw the ashtray by the seat.

A half-burned cigarette, still warm

and then she knew

through tears and storm,

his goodbye meant 

he was forever gone.

I want to tell you many things,

to reach your heart where silence sings,

to touch the place no hands can find,

to shake your world, your soul, your mind.

The greatest question stays the same,

without a shape, without a name.

We smile like children, look away,

too shy to let the truth just stay.

It’s hard to fit the truth in words,

to make them clear, to make them heard.

Still, I try line after line,

hoping somehow they’ll make you mine.

I trust in words, though they can lie,

though sometimes love goes passing by.

With them I loved, with them I bled,

with them I spoke what stayed unsaid.

They are the bridge from me to you,

too rough for feelings soft and true.

And still, I use them, still I try,

to place my heart where words can fly.

So hear me now, simple and true

despite it all, I believe in you.

Through every flaw, through every scar,

I trust the person that you are.

And since words change with how they move,

be careful, harsh words can still be love,

and gentle comfort, soft and sweet,

can sometimes hide something incomplete.

Words are strange, they bend, they break,

but still, they’re all I have to make.

A thousand meanings, tried and true

and still, my best attempt is to reach you.

When I am gone,

do not stand by my grave and cry.

I am not there

do not let that thought weigh on your heart.

I am in the autumn rain,

I am in the warm tea

resting in your cup.

I am in the winds that blow,

for in the earth

there is only a body without a soul.

I am in the sounds

of laughing people,

I am in the birdsong

that wakes you in the morning,

in smiling faces.

I am in the reflection of stars

across the clear summer sky.

I am not beneath the ground,

I do not sleep in the grave.

Do not stand there,

do not cry,

and do not feel guilty.

Because I am here

still alive within you my dear.

People often hide their feelings,

burying them deep inside.

In a world that praises easy smiles,

many feel they must hide

their sadness, their anger, their pain.

But unspoken emotions never disappear.

They stay alive beneath the surface,

waiting quietly,

only to return later

in darker and heavier ways.

Many have no one

they can truly talk to.

They fear judgment,

they fear being misunderstood,

so they choose silence instead.

And silence becomes heavy.

A person may look calm on the outside,

may smile, may laugh,

may seem completely fine—

while inside,

they are standing at the edge of breaking.

As time passes,

those hidden feelings grow stronger.

The sadness, the anger,

the words never spoken—

they turn into a weight

that becomes harder and harder to carry.

And so people search for escape.

They reach for unhealthy habits,

trying to quiet the pain,

trying to outrun

what lives inside them.

But pain does not disappear

just because it is ignored.

Sometimes,

the heaviest thing a person carries

is not what they say

but everything

they never could.

You’ve done something bad

And you feel like you will go mad

 

It’s always there

It follows you around

You can’t get enough air

You feel like you will drown

 

It’s your fault

It’s something that you did

You try to lock it in vault

And wish you were a kid

 

If you don’t get it off your chest

You will become a mess

It will create stress

And you will never make progress

 

Do something

Don’t quit

Let go of your GUILT.

A report on something immensely important: there was a change of places.

It happened today, and it happened like this…

She had to go to the Employment Service to submit the papers confirming the termination of her work contract, so they could register her in the system again—just in case someone might accidentally call and happen to need someone with exactly her profession.

Even though her legs already felt tired and heavy the moment she got out of bed, she did not hesitate about going to that hated place. It was time to get it done.

For three years now, she hadn’t really felt like doing anything.

Ever since her husband had died, life had turned into a list of things that simply had to be done. Papers, bills, signatures, visits, explanations. People stopped asking how she was after the first few months. After a year, they expected smiles. After two, they expected normality. After three, everyone assumed she was fine.

But grief does not follow calendars.

No one asks how you are.

Everyone simply expects you to keep going.

In the long line inside the dark, narrow hallway, she stood in the tenth position—the last standing place in the queue.

Somehow, that felt familiar.

For years now, she had felt like she was always standing in the wrong place. No longer where she used to belong, and not yet anywhere new. Too old to start over, too young to give up, too tired for both.

The stale air of that hot and humid summer morning she tried to fight off by fanning herself with the papers she had brought to register again. Physically, it did not help at all, but her mind refused to admit that, so she kept waving them anyway.

Time passed so slowly that she had already begun imagining the line was not moving at all, and the unreachable office door seemed to open only once every leap year.

She shifted her weight from one leg to the other as many times as was physically possible—and as much as her bladder allowed.

When it was no longer physically possible to hold it in, she went to the bathroom.

When she came back, she noticed a new back standing in the last place of the line.

At the very end.

She walked up to the man, who looked about her age, and in a tired voice explained that he was standing exactly where she had been standing.

He turned around.

He looked exhausted too—pale face, dark circles under his eyes, a few days of beard, and those strangely bright red sneakers that looked almost ridiculous against the rest of him. He was holding folded papers in one hand and coughing into the other.

“I have no intention of moving from this spot. This is my place!”

Those words came out of the man’s mouth and landed straight into her surprised ears.

For a second, she wanted to argue.

She had been standing there for two hours.

Her legs hurt, her back hurt, and her patience had been gone long before breakfast.

But the man looked like someone who had also been standing in the wrong place for too long.

Her body was so exhausted that she couldn’t even gather enough anger.

She simply replied:

“You’re right. It is your place.”

She admitted it to him, but deep inside, she still knew it had been hers.

Then she stood behind him, in her new place, and once again found herself standing last in line.

She quietly stared at her shoes, until her gaze wandered to the strangely bright red sneakers worn by the man standing in her place.

There was nothing else to do except look around the suffocating, humid room.

Along with the pain in her legs and bladder, she now began to feel a strong pain in her back.

“If I were still in my place, I would be next by now,” she thought bitterly.

Then she looked again at the man in the red sneakers.

He was coughing.

Not loudly, but the kind of cough that had been there for a long time. He leaned slightly forward, like standing itself required effort.

And suddenly she thought—

he was probably carrying some pain of his own, both inside and out.

No matter how long a minute feels, it still has sixty seconds, and every one of them passes.

Everything passes.

Nine people had finished.

It was finally her turn when the clerk stepped out of the promised office and taped a paper to the door with the word:

BREAK

She closed her eyes.

For one second, she genuinely considered screaming.

She did not want to lose her mind and blame the man in the red sneakers again, who was probably now enjoying fresh air somewhere outside this suffocating hallway.

She thought that at least during the half-hour break, she would enjoy the privilege of being first in line.

Today she would finish this.

She had not stood there for nothing.

Then she heard the sound of sirens echoing down the street.

She looked toward the window, trying to see what was happening. People in the hallway stretched their necks toward the glass. Someone muttered something about an accident.

She couldn’t see much.

Just flashing lights and people gathering.

At that moment, the clerk finally returned, and she stepped into the promised office.

She spent just under three hours at the Croatian Employment Service.

When she got home, her sister asked how it went.

“Papers are papers,” she answered painfully, with a faint smile, and said she was going to lie down for a bit.

She slept through the rest of the exhausting day and the entire night.

The next morning, her sister woke her for breakfast.

She got out of bed and felt a strange lightness and freshness in her legs she hadn’t felt in a very long time.

As if something heavy had finally been moved.

While eating breakfast, hungry as a wolf, her sister read aloud from the morning newspaper.

“This is unbelievable, listen to this…”

She continued reading:

Cat Causes Accident

Because of a cat running onto the road, a driver lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a middle-aged man just a few meters away from the Croatian Employment Service building.

The rescue operation lasted just under three hours, after which the injured man died on the way to the hospital.

The driver suffered no injuries.

At that moment, a strange feeling came over her.

She stopped chewing.

The fork remained in her hand.

She stood up from the table, food still in her mouth, and looked over her sister’s shoulder at the opened newspaper.

There, beside the article, was a blurred photograph from the street.

She remembered the sirens.

She remembered the argument.

She remembered the cough.

And the only thing she truly noticed was one strangely bright red sneaker.

She stood there for a long time, staring.

If she had not gone to the bathroom…

If she had argued harder…

If he had moved…

If she had stayed exactly where she believed she belonged…

She swallowed.

And quietly, almost like an apology, she said:

“That really wasn’t my plac

I don’t know how long I had been walking through the desert, or how I ended up there, nor did I know where I was going. I only felt the sand beneath my feet and the sun turning and disappearing, turning and disappearing, over and over again. Sometimes I would lie down on the sand that burned, yet somehow did not hurt.

On my palate, I could feel a different kind of sand, the kind I swallowed but that never quenched my thirst. Though, truthfully, I was neither hungry nor thirsty.

I don’t know how I ended up in that village either.

The people were strangers to me. Not strangers only in the sense that I had never met them before. Strangers in the sense that I had forgotten what that word even meant.

People… people… people…

I tried to remember, but digging through my dried-up brain was like trying to remember the future.

On the little stones lay a small creature.

I had forgotten language, at least partly. After enough time in the desert, a person forgets how to think, and then stops trying and finally understands what silence truly means.

I swallowed.

I sat beside the small being.

It had no hair. A drop of saliva hung down its chubby jaw like on… well, like on small babies. I remembered that humans are first babies.

This creature was one.

I remembered the meaning of the word people only when I sat beside the little being that could not even sit by itself, that belonged either in its mother’s arms or in a cradle.

A boy? A girl?

I couldn’t tell.

After all, aren’t all babies alike?

Slowly, it was coming back to me.

I swallowed again and said something I didn’t even understand myself.

“Sorry?” said the baby.

It had no teeth. It lay on the little stones, barely able to hold its head up. Its hands were full of pebbles.

Something told me babies probably shouldn’t be playing with pebbles.

“Mom? Where’s your mom?”

“How should I know?” it answered, completely uninterested, in a tiny voice.

I stared at the creature.

Slowly, fragments of the past returned—points of memory without chronology, like scattered, yellowed photographs.

“What are you doing here alone?”

Instinct told me I should hold it. Reason fought against that instinct for some unknown reason.

“Are you stupid like the others?”

“Sorry?”

“Everyone is stupid.”

“Where are your parents?”

“Where everyone else is.”

“Where is everyone?”

“Didn’t you see? Are you blind?”

“I saw. People… walking around, mostly.”

The baby sighed and stopped playing with the pebbles.

“Everyone walks, sits, prays, sleeps. Mostly they sleep, even while doing everything else. I don’t know why everyone is so stupid.”

“Why are they stupid?”

The baby tried to look at me. Its cheeks seemed too heavy to let it open its eyes properly; I could only barely see the whites beneath thick eyelashes.

“You’re not much smarter.”

“Why?”

I smiled. The feeling was strange.

“Are the pebbles fun?”

“Sort of.”

I smiled again. I liked the feeling.

“What are you going to do with them?”

“Build a castle.”

“You want to be a king?”

“I don’t want to rule. I don’t want to build a castle for that.”

“Then why?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I want to be an architect.”

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised.

“Take me to that well.”

“Why?”

“Are you serious? I’m thirsty.”

After a deep swallow, the baby asked me:

“You’re not thirsty?”

I didn’t know why, but I sensed sarcasm in the voice of a baby that sounded like a small puppy.

“Not really.”

“You’re like them, aren’t you.”

That wasn’t a question.

I didn’t know what to say.

“Put me back.”

I placed it down on the pebbles.

“Do you think I’ll become an architect?”

“In this world, it’s hard to become what you want.”

“Do you see those people? On the road? That old man on the bench?”

“What about them?”

“You’re like them.”

“How?”

“They told me I won’t become an architect. You only suggested there’s a possibility.”

After a pause, it continued:

“Look at them better. And how do they look?”

I stayed silent.

“They are dead. Okay, not officially. But they are dead. That old man has smoked at least fifty cigarettes today. He hasn’t moved from that bench, he just rolls cigarettes and lights them. That woman in black, the old one, has walked around the village on that same path six times today. She can barely walk, every bone in her probably hurts, but she doesn’t know it.”

“And what kind of place is this?”

The baby exhaled.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“I grew up a long time ago.”

“You’re a bigger baby than me. And an idiot. People grow up when they decide they are grown up. What do you want to be?”

I tried to find an answer, but no thought came.

“What is that old woman? That old man?”

“I once asked her, while she was passing by, what she wanted to be when she grew up. Out of pure stupidity.”

“What did she say?”

“She didn’t see me.”

“And what does that have to do with anything?”

“Because she is dead. She didn’t see me. Do you know where all dead people live?”

I almost said In the cemetery, but I let it answer.

“In the past. She doesn’t see because she doesn’t look, she is blind because she doesn’t see, she is dead because she lives in the past. Everyone here is like that. You remind me of them.”

“I’m neither blind nor dead,” I said, this time out loud, a little angry.

“What were you doing in the desert?”

“Nothing.”

“Dying?”

“No.”

“Yes. But at least you didn’t die. Yet. Give it a little more time.”

“So what should I do, smartass?”

The baby screamed:

“Be a fucking architect! Be something, for fuck’s sake!”

I stared.

For the first time, I really saw its face.

Beneath its bare scalp, its eyes changed color in the light, as if they were still developing, muddy, with flashes of green here and there. Its top two teeth were just beginning to grow. Its cheeks had turned red. Its neck gave in under the weight, and its head fell back onto the pebbles. Its tiny chest rose and fell quickly.

“The ones who are still dying keep telling me I won’t be an architect. Why are all adults so stupid…”

That wasn’t a question either.

“I believe you’ll be an excellent architect.”

“I don’t give a damn about your opinion or your pity or whatever that is. I know I’ll be a good architect, and that’s enough for me. As far as I’m concerned, you can all walk back to wherever you came from. I’m going my own way.”

“But I’m old,” I began slowly. “It’s already too late for me—”

“It doesn’t matter.”

It sighed, as if realizing there was no point trying anymore.

“Go wherever you want. I don’t have patience anymore for you and your stupidity.”

I sat there on the pebbles for a while longer, watching the little creature carefully choosing stones for its castle through the narrow slits of its eyelashes.

I looked at that being, then at the line of the dead people on the road nearby.

And then I looked back at it.

The baby was watching me.

There was something like pity in its eyes.

“You are born, you rot, you die. Death is not important. Birth is not the beginning. What remains is the part in between—the process of rotting. While you rot, at least do what you love. A person does not become human when they are born; they become human when they decide to. If you only want to rot, that’s easy. Most people do exactly that. And then you say, in this world it’s hard to do this or that, blah blah, bullshit—of course it is. And what does that world mean to me? I am my own world. That is enough for me. My whole life, this world keeps telling me what I should be, what I will be, how I will be. And when people hear that, they get angry—but in the end, most of them do exactly what they were told.”

“Well, you haven’t lived very long,” I joked.

“I’ve lived longer than you did in your stupid desert.”

I laughed, somehow sadly.

“So what now? Should I leave you alone?”

“That’s up to you, isn’t it?”

I sat a little longer, watching the infant play with pebbles.

Then I stood up, drank water—I had already forgotten what it even felt like to drink a mouthful of clean, cold water—and I walked along the line of the dead.

This time, for the first time, they no longer looked frightening.

They were only people who had stopped choosing.

Ahead of me, beyond the village and beyond the desert, there was light.

Not sunlight.

Something quieter.

Something final.

I turned once more toward the child.

It was still sitting among the pebbles, building its castle, as if it had always known I would leave.

“Will I die?” I asked.

The baby didn’t look at me.

“That depends,” it said.

“On what?”

“On whether you finally decide to wake up.”

I stood there for a long time, staring at the light.

For the first time in my life, I was afraid.

Not of death

but of returning.

Because returning meant pain.

Returning meant unfinished things.

Returning meant becoming.

The light waited.

So did the world behind me.

I took one breath—

deep enough to hurt—

and stepped forward.

Then I heard it.

A voice.

Distant. Real.

“He’s waking up.”

And suddenly, the desert was gone.

We often look at each other

like we are about to kiss

Can we then find one another

And fall into the abyss?

 

Can you and I be permanent parts

of each other lives?

Can we throw darts

and laugh from our hearts?

 

Can you and I spend infinite time

of careless first times with infinite highs?

Can we be partners in a crime

together through all the lies?

 

Can dopamine fill our bodies and detonate

from our mouths at the embrace of each other?

Can we just say that this is fate

something that doesn’t happen every day?

 

Can we feel the instant connection and chemistry between you and I?

Can we look at each other and not say goodbye?

 

Can you and I know this is real?

Can we describe how we feel?

 

Can we be close?

Or will we overdose?

So many people around,

Few of them kind.

So many people seen,

Few of them mean.

 

In the eyes of one

You radiate the sun.

In the eyes of another

You are not a brother.

 

One You in so many eyes

Each is a disguise

 

Family You,

You with your crew,

You with your friend

But that You also comes to an end.

 

You drink beers

And then new You appears.

You fall in love

And new You comes above.

 

You come home

New You starts to roam.

 

So many different you

Not just few.

But there is nothing to fear

As long as You know which one is real.

My inbox is a constant flood,

Yesterday's tasks lingering stubbornly into today.

Plucking hairs, they sprout back,

Mocking my efforts against time's relentless march.

Everything seems to grow endlessly.

Nails, ears, nose

all marking the passage of time.

Messages flood my digital space,

demanding my constant attention.

The phone disrupts life's natural rhythm,

pulling me away from the flow of existence.

Journeys, decisions, places left unvisited,

life carries on its relentless march.

But amidst the chaos, I wonder, does life hold meaning?

Failed attempts at self-improvement,

breaths shortened by stress.

Strangers morph into familiar faces.

Survival becomes routine,

yet it remains everything.

In moments of clarity, I find fleeting solace.

Releasing the pain, releasing the chaos, starting anew.

But the mundane tasks persist, grounding me in reality.

Another day, another struggle,

navigating this relentless game of survival.

Fighting against time's relentless march.