But my heart it is brighter
Than all of the many
Stars in the sky,
For it sparkles with Annie —
It glows with the light
Of the love of my Annie —
With the thought of the light
Of the eyes of my Annie.

    — Edgar Allan Poe, from “For Annie”

They walked side by side in the vast silence of the Rot and Ruin.

    — Jonathan Maberry, from Rot and Ruin

My loves are here: wrists, eyelids, damp toes, all scars, and my mouth
pouring praises, still asking, saying kiss me; when I’m dead kiss this poem,
it needs you to know it goes on, give it your lovely mouth, your living tongue.

    — Kim Addonizio, “Kisses” from What is this Thing Called Love

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

    — Ursula Le Guin, from “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”

I woke up into the bleak winter morning of my twenty-first birthday, the window-sill shining with its lip of snow, and the morning already begun.

    — Delmore Schwartz, from “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities”

[And his lifeless body grows cold on the hotel bed; unaware of her kiss, ripped from her soul and ordered to her lips as a final act, to bring to conclusion the hours she has spent at the window, watching his dead eyes watch the ceiling, and to give her a way to touch him beyond shutting those eyes; unaware of her eyes, at first wet, but then drying and remaining dry, even as the whimpers begin to rise from her throat, only to be lost in the din of the casino as she walks out of the hotel; unaware of her bed, the truth of her life, as it meanders back to her apartment.] She undresses, brushes her teeth, lies awake in the darkness.

    — John O’Brien, from Leaving Las Vegas