He waited by the door, a fraction of a second. Hoping to hear that one word. The man behind him reached out, grasped at empty air, and dropped his hand, face following. As the blond left, he dropped to his knees, and wordless, soundless sobs began wracking his frame. Unbeknownst to him, the blond was just outside, in the same position.
Jess
i want to stay with my friends
but we all know this must end
a life like this is not sustainable
fuck if it hasn’t been entertaining, though
molly
Stay is an odd word. Our culture is always moving so fast. I have been working on living in the moment. Seems more peaceful.
Stay. Please stay. Don’t leave. Don’t abandon me. I need you close, not smothering close. But just close enough to feel your presence. Feel your safety. Feel your spirit. Please, stay.
suspend the accentuated place-when-two-directions-converge
Garz
Stay at the Invisible Museum forever, as you did enter, you now have never left the land of invisibility, but as we are all invisible, we can all see more than we did before, i hope you enjoyed your infinite stay, i love you more than yesterday.
Please stay, don’t leave me. Don’t confirm all of the insecurities I have. Just stay here, in my bed, for a bit longer and hold me until I can cry again. Please stay, don’t leave me.
Gwendolyn
I want you to stay. I don’t want you to abandon me again. The first time was like I’d been ripped in half, right down the middle, and part of me was buried, hidden, somewhere in the world. Lost to me. I only found it the second I met your eyes across the lot, that day. We had a crowd of people between us, but we found each other. That has to count for something.
RainJMERain
I want to stay here, in this room and talk endlessly, spilling words out of my mouth and have you weave these threads of thoughts into beautiful prose. You are my muse, my dear Apollo, and I can’t lose you, so please let me stay here.
apieceofsunburned
Doyle was expecting the call, but it was not as explosive as he had expected. The man he knew only as “Lambert” instructed him to stay the course, saying this was only a minor setback, and the goal was unchanged. There would be some minor adjustments, but he was to continue with the original plan.
tonykeyesjapan
If she had it her way, he would come and stay forever. But their lives were separate for now, and that was a reality she would have to accept.
” You can stay, you know. ”
Joshua looked at his ennemy ( friend, lover, he didn’t know anymore ) and shrugged.
” Yeah, I know. Doesn’t mean I will. ”
But someday, he will stay. Just not today.
Kangoo
I want to leave but I have to stay. Stay on the room with all my messy feelings. I could refill my glass of wine, turn on the tv, escape in so many ways. But the inner prompt is telling me no, you’ve tried this before, it never works. Maybe this time you can let it all go and simply stay. Stay here, right on this spot in this moment. With the rawness, the ache, the tightness in the chest and belly, the constriction in the throat. It won’t choke you, it is your sadness and all it wants it to be seen, held, embraced, given the space to emerge so that you can cradle it in your arms and in your heart, so that it can finally be seen, really seen, deeply recognized and cherished.
Miv London
It was quite pathetic, really, how things always ended up here. No matter the amount of time spent together, in the aftermath, he was always the one leaving and Riley would always be the one left behind, feigning sleep – ‘so goodbye won’t be such a hard word to say,’ or so she’d once whispered, hazel irises barely visible behind already-closing eyelids – in sheets he would always want to roll around in for an hour or two longer.
Of course, the beginnings were always different.
There was the fact that bumping into each other at the local grocery store was unavoidable, seeing as there was only one, and their eyes would meet across aisles two and three, and she would smirk that annoyingly endearing half-smirk of hers, and continue shopping, as if last night and all the other nights before that had never happened.
There was community college, where he was in at least three of her classes, all of which were equally fascinating, now that she had that familiar mop of dirty blonde hair to watch out for in between coffee breaks and running all the way across campus to get from one elective to another.
Sometimes, he would spot her sketching in the Brooks, a little hole-in-the-wall cafe that catered to hipsters and aspiring poets, as Sophie often stated, and his younger sister was usually right about these sort of things. He knew she was neither, though, and he’d even considered buying a chocolate chip cookie there once, if only to see whether she was drawing him.
On other occasions, they would simply be at the same club, and despite the sea of strobe and spilled drinks, they would catch a glimpse of each other. He would see her dress slip slightly off her shoulder, baring her freckles for all the world to see, and again his lips would long for a taste of them. Of her.
On those nights, he would chuck back an extra drink and forget about the title holding him back. She would rub charcoal and oil out of her mind, along with the smudges on her fingers from handling them so much. They would forget about him being somebody and her being nobody, and just be, in the simplest sense of the word.
On those nights, they would topple back to her apartment – it was closer – and just lie there in the dark, staring up at the little plastic stars she’d glued on the ceiling when she was eleven. It was cute, really, how she still held on to tiny pieces of her childhood in some ways. Or maybe it was just him being envious for having had to grow up way too fast.
Then they would talk. About his work and her paintings and the stars and Monet and Bruce Banner and poetry and rock bands and martinis and this film and that book and everything else that came in between. In those quiet hours between night and morning, he wasn’t an agent for one of the top agencies in London and she wasn’t a working class student who woke up at five every morning to make sure her little brother got a proper breakfast and trotted off to school on time.
They were just Riley and James, barely holding themselves against the world, but still scraping by.
Then her alarm would ring and he would have to go, and she would whisper for him to stay, because why the fuck not, and over and over, he would slip out her window and she would still be asleep, both aware and unaware of the fact that he was gone yet again.
Ella J.
“No! Don’t go, Daddy! It’s really under the bed, I swear!”
“Now, we’ve been over this many times, my dear. Monsters aren’t real…”
“I’m not talking about monsters, Daddy! I mean the necklace Mom left you!”
“Wait, what?”
Paul crawled under the bed. He was grappling in the dark when he heard the demonic laughter from above him.
I froze, not sure i could believe what i was hearing. “After all this time, *now* you ask me to stay?” I’m not sure i’ve ever felt so outraged in all my life.
He shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “I know. I know the time is … not good.”
I huff.
Tarni
i dont want to stay in this place. i am not happy. when i must come back here i am not happy because i feel the stickiness of the swamp cooler and the smell coming from the carpet. i am not happy. i think about the feeling of cold tile at night in my new home and i am happy. it will be soon.
Emily
Stay here, in this place that’s kind and comfortable, a place where I feel I belong and you’re right here with me to enjoy this life that we’re living. Fleeting as it is, and I’m always the first to point that out because on the contrary, I want these moments to last forever, but you tell me not to be sad but to be happy we had this time together, but that doesn’t erase the fact that at some point, it’ll all be over.
“Stay, I said stay.” the boy said to his dog. “I don’t want you to get last. Stay.” The dog turned around with his tail between his legs and sat by the front porch, watching the boy as he shut the gate behind him.
It was hard to get out of bed some days. The world was full and beautiful, but he preferred the solemn darkness of his blocked-out bedroom; it matched the way he felt about himself. Yes, today he would wallow, though deep in his heart he knew it would, in the end, fix no problem.
Diana Ramírez
He was something that I didn’t even know how to contemplate. I genuinely liked him for him and I couldn’t lose him, not like last time.
“Jack, please just stay here with me.”
“Okay.” he whispered, lacing his finger with mine. I pressed my forehead against his and smiled quietly.
I am asking you not to leave, begging even. But I’m not using words, I use my eyes and you cannot read them. Not like I can.
You turn back to him and he tells you he loves you, uses his words like an adult and you kiss him. That’s exactly what I feared. You hear him.
kjfhaslkdf
She shoulo have begged. She could have told him how she felt, told him the truth. She should have screamed it from the roof tops, at the top of her lungs, until her voice went hoarse. She should have made him listen, moved him, shook him to the very core.
No matter what he did, he could not stray from the pure capital “t” truth that the moment was perfect. Nothing but her, him and the sound of the crashing waves. “Stay with me>
TJ Van Buskirk
It’s a word for lovers, this one. It’s embellished on our swollen hearts. It’s what the frightened voice inside us whispers as we cling to each other at night. It’s all we want, as we pour our souls out to each other. We show ourselves, bit by bit, clinging to our perhaps-soulmate and hoping that – please oh please – they will stay.
An undeniable indecisiveness. For ten seconds it’s tumultuous and sublime. It’s profound and it’s raw – it’s there with the suds in your straw, making even the sores in your mouth seem fruitful. And for the ten months following, it’s anything but. It’s condoned in a vector and it’s forced. It’s null and it’s empty – it’s there with the fatigue that stirs itself into dark circles under your eyes.
It’s temporary, and all of the sudden you don’t want it to be.
please, dear go just dont go. I promise i will never hurt you like that again as long as you dont leave me. i know we can make it all work out. God damn it at least let me in, it’s pouring out here.
william
People never stay. all of them leave. take alex for example. he said that he would be tehre and then he wasnt. people always lie about how they are never going to leave your life and ten all of a sudden BOOM they’re gone. and you dont even know who they are anymroe. You go from being so close and sharing secrets to not even saying hi when you pass one another in the hallway or on the street. How sad is that?
Emma Brandt
string
spike
skillet
smile
silince
second
singu
Rayanna Magdyelli
She smiled and stared at the post card. He eyes hurt, but it was okay. He was safe and far away form her. He didn’t bleed from her nails, or ache from her words, or cry over her in general. He was far away and that’s where he would stay
Sarah Grace
“I want you to stay with me,” she whispered. “Stay. Please.”
But of course, he wasn’t there to hear her. She felt the sob approaching quickly from somewhere deep within her chest; the pain was taking her breath away, so that she was having trouble staying calm–not that “staying calm” was at all easy at the moment.
She felt so alone. What was she supposed to do, with something like this? How was she supposed to carry on, day after day, when her father’s body had been set on fire and burned until it was nothing but ash only a few hours prior? Yet, that was exactly what she had to do: carry on.
I asked you to stay, but, like usual, that was too much. When I asked too much o you, you’d sigh, your breath smelling of stale cigarettes and regret. I have my fair share of regrets, but you aren’t one of them.
Victoria Coleman
bent.
bent like a fishing wire dad used to yell at me for tying wrong
“No!” she screeched, her hand reaching out and wrapping tightly around a frail wrist. “You can’t go! I need you here, with me! Please!”
Her tears streamed freely down her face, dotting the scratchy hospital sheet below. The old woman smiled. “I’m sorry.”
Hannah
She knelt by the radiator in the room and inspected the flecks of white paint that had chipped off. Her finger spooned the Canadian penny out of her fraying jean pockets, and she placed it gently underneath the radiator, close enough to the wall to keep it hidden.
The penny would stay here forever, or until the next owners vacuumed the room very thoroughly. But Yael would go. She had to go.
Stay with me in this time of need
My soul is losing hope
I have lost the will to stand, and the faith to move on.
I fear my death is soon approaching
A death of choice not of ending time
As I stand here leaving my loved ones behind.
elaina
For the rest of Lisa’s stay, the weather was terrible; the rain came down in aggressive, impatient spurts, and in some parts of the city, the flooding was so bad that streets were closed for hours on end. Lisa decided to keep to herself in the hotel, watching TV, feeling the last bits of her soul dwindling away with each rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond.
Belinda Roddie
“Stay,” she whispered, tugging at the hem of his sleeve. “Stay,” the trees breathed, swaying in their soup of watery gray sky. “Stay,” the flowers murmured, nodding together among the railroad tracks, the heaps of vines and splintered wood that rotted among the tall weedy grass. “Stay.” The lines ran down the underside of her arm and joined to create a set of tracks, an empty railroad with no train. She would follow it until her feet grew sore and her eyes ran wet with dew, but still she walked.
He waited by the door, a fraction of a second. Hoping to hear that one word. The man behind him reached out, grasped at empty air, and dropped his hand, face following. As the blond left, he dropped to his knees, and wordless, soundless sobs began wracking his frame. Unbeknownst to him, the blond was just outside, in the same position.
i want to stay with my friends
but we all know this must end
a life like this is not sustainable
fuck if it hasn’t been entertaining, though
Stay is an odd word. Our culture is always moving so fast. I have been working on living in the moment. Seems more peaceful.
Stay. Please stay. Don’t leave. Don’t abandon me. I need you close, not smothering close. But just close enough to feel your presence. Feel your safety. Feel your spirit. Please, stay.
suspend the accentuated place-when-two-directions-converge
Stay at the Invisible Museum forever, as you did enter, you now have never left the land of invisibility, but as we are all invisible, we can all see more than we did before, i hope you enjoyed your infinite stay, i love you more than yesterday.
stay.
he wouldn’t
return after he’d gone
why couldn’t he just
hold her hand for one last time
tell her he’d be back
she wished he could
she wished he could
tell her he’d be back
hold her hand for one last time
why couldn’t he just
return after he’d gone
he wouldn’t
stay.
Please stay, don’t leave me. Don’t confirm all of the insecurities I have. Just stay here, in my bed, for a bit longer and hold me until I can cry again. Please stay, don’t leave me.
I want you to stay. I don’t want you to abandon me again. The first time was like I’d been ripped in half, right down the middle, and part of me was buried, hidden, somewhere in the world. Lost to me. I only found it the second I met your eyes across the lot, that day. We had a crowd of people between us, but we found each other. That has to count for something.
I want to stay here, in this room and talk endlessly, spilling words out of my mouth and have you weave these threads of thoughts into beautiful prose. You are my muse, my dear Apollo, and I can’t lose you, so please let me stay here.
Doyle was expecting the call, but it was not as explosive as he had expected. The man he knew only as “Lambert” instructed him to stay the course, saying this was only a minor setback, and the goal was unchanged. There would be some minor adjustments, but he was to continue with the original plan.
If she had it her way, he would come and stay forever. But their lives were separate for now, and that was a reality she would have to accept.
” You can stay, you know. ”
Joshua looked at his ennemy ( friend, lover, he didn’t know anymore ) and shrugged.
” Yeah, I know. Doesn’t mean I will. ”
But someday, he will stay. Just not today.
I want to leave but I have to stay. Stay on the room with all my messy feelings. I could refill my glass of wine, turn on the tv, escape in so many ways. But the inner prompt is telling me no, you’ve tried this before, it never works. Maybe this time you can let it all go and simply stay. Stay here, right on this spot in this moment. With the rawness, the ache, the tightness in the chest and belly, the constriction in the throat. It won’t choke you, it is your sadness and all it wants it to be seen, held, embraced, given the space to emerge so that you can cradle it in your arms and in your heart, so that it can finally be seen, really seen, deeply recognized and cherished.
It was quite pathetic, really, how things always ended up here. No matter the amount of time spent together, in the aftermath, he was always the one leaving and Riley would always be the one left behind, feigning sleep – ‘so goodbye won’t be such a hard word to say,’ or so she’d once whispered, hazel irises barely visible behind already-closing eyelids – in sheets he would always want to roll around in for an hour or two longer.
Of course, the beginnings were always different.
There was the fact that bumping into each other at the local grocery store was unavoidable, seeing as there was only one, and their eyes would meet across aisles two and three, and she would smirk that annoyingly endearing half-smirk of hers, and continue shopping, as if last night and all the other nights before that had never happened.
There was community college, where he was in at least three of her classes, all of which were equally fascinating, now that she had that familiar mop of dirty blonde hair to watch out for in between coffee breaks and running all the way across campus to get from one elective to another.
Sometimes, he would spot her sketching in the Brooks, a little hole-in-the-wall cafe that catered to hipsters and aspiring poets, as Sophie often stated, and his younger sister was usually right about these sort of things. He knew she was neither, though, and he’d even considered buying a chocolate chip cookie there once, if only to see whether she was drawing him.
On other occasions, they would simply be at the same club, and despite the sea of strobe and spilled drinks, they would catch a glimpse of each other. He would see her dress slip slightly off her shoulder, baring her freckles for all the world to see, and again his lips would long for a taste of them. Of her.
On those nights, he would chuck back an extra drink and forget about the title holding him back. She would rub charcoal and oil out of her mind, along with the smudges on her fingers from handling them so much. They would forget about him being somebody and her being nobody, and just be, in the simplest sense of the word.
On those nights, they would topple back to her apartment – it was closer – and just lie there in the dark, staring up at the little plastic stars she’d glued on the ceiling when she was eleven. It was cute, really, how she still held on to tiny pieces of her childhood in some ways. Or maybe it was just him being envious for having had to grow up way too fast.
Then they would talk. About his work and her paintings and the stars and Monet and Bruce Banner and poetry and rock bands and martinis and this film and that book and everything else that came in between. In those quiet hours between night and morning, he wasn’t an agent for one of the top agencies in London and she wasn’t a working class student who woke up at five every morning to make sure her little brother got a proper breakfast and trotted off to school on time.
They were just Riley and James, barely holding themselves against the world, but still scraping by.
Then her alarm would ring and he would have to go, and she would whisper for him to stay, because why the fuck not, and over and over, he would slip out her window and she would still be asleep, both aware and unaware of the fact that he was gone yet again.
“No! Don’t go, Daddy! It’s really under the bed, I swear!”
“Now, we’ve been over this many times, my dear. Monsters aren’t real…”
“I’m not talking about monsters, Daddy! I mean the necklace Mom left you!”
“Wait, what?”
Paul crawled under the bed. He was grappling in the dark when he heard the demonic laughter from above him.
Then he was falling…
“I need you to stay,” he whispered.
I froze, not sure i could believe what i was hearing. “After all this time, *now* you ask me to stay?” I’m not sure i’ve ever felt so outraged in all my life.
He shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “I know. I know the time is … not good.”
I huff.
i dont want to stay in this place. i am not happy. when i must come back here i am not happy because i feel the stickiness of the swamp cooler and the smell coming from the carpet. i am not happy. i think about the feeling of cold tile at night in my new home and i am happy. it will be soon.
Stay here, in this place that’s kind and comfortable, a place where I feel I belong and you’re right here with me to enjoy this life that we’re living. Fleeting as it is, and I’m always the first to point that out because on the contrary, I want these moments to last forever, but you tell me not to be sad but to be happy we had this time together, but that doesn’t erase the fact that at some point, it’ll all be over.
“Stay, I said stay.” the boy said to his dog. “I don’t want you to get last. Stay.” The dog turned around with his tail between his legs and sat by the front porch, watching the boy as he shut the gate behind him.
It was hard to get out of bed some days. The world was full and beautiful, but he preferred the solemn darkness of his blocked-out bedroom; it matched the way he felt about himself. Yes, today he would wallow, though deep in his heart he knew it would, in the end, fix no problem.
He was something that I didn’t even know how to contemplate. I genuinely liked him for him and I couldn’t lose him, not like last time.
“Jack, please just stay here with me.”
“Okay.” he whispered, lacing his finger with mine. I pressed my forehead against his and smiled quietly.
I am asking you not to leave, begging even. But I’m not using words, I use my eyes and you cannot read them. Not like I can.
You turn back to him and he tells you he loves you, uses his words like an adult and you kiss him. That’s exactly what I feared. You hear him.
She shoulo have begged. She could have told him how she felt, told him the truth. She should have screamed it from the roof tops, at the top of her lungs, until her voice went hoarse. She should have made him listen, moved him, shook him to the very core.
Maybe then he would have stayed.
No matter what he did, he could not stray from the pure capital “t” truth that the moment was perfect. Nothing but her, him and the sound of the crashing waves. “Stay with me>
It’s a word for lovers, this one. It’s embellished on our swollen hearts. It’s what the frightened voice inside us whispers as we cling to each other at night. It’s all we want, as we pour our souls out to each other. We show ourselves, bit by bit, clinging to our perhaps-soulmate and hoping that – please oh please – they will stay.
An undeniable indecisiveness. For ten seconds it’s tumultuous and sublime. It’s profound and it’s raw – it’s there with the suds in your straw, making even the sores in your mouth seem fruitful. And for the ten months following, it’s anything but. It’s condoned in a vector and it’s forced. It’s null and it’s empty – it’s there with the fatigue that stirs itself into dark circles under your eyes.
It’s temporary, and all of the sudden you don’t want it to be.
stay with me
please don’t go
for if you do
I’ll fell so alone
the darkness
will creep in
and the world
will disappear
so stay with me
please, dear go just dont go. I promise i will never hurt you like that again as long as you dont leave me. i know we can make it all work out. God damn it at least let me in, it’s pouring out here.
People never stay. all of them leave. take alex for example. he said that he would be tehre and then he wasnt. people always lie about how they are never going to leave your life and ten all of a sudden BOOM they’re gone. and you dont even know who they are anymroe. You go from being so close and sharing secrets to not even saying hi when you pass one another in the hallway or on the street. How sad is that?
string
spike
skillet
smile
silince
second
singu
She smiled and stared at the post card. He eyes hurt, but it was okay. He was safe and far away form her. He didn’t bleed from her nails, or ache from her words, or cry over her in general. He was far away and that’s where he would stay
“I want you to stay with me,” she whispered. “Stay. Please.”
But of course, he wasn’t there to hear her. She felt the sob approaching quickly from somewhere deep within her chest; the pain was taking her breath away, so that she was having trouble staying calm–not that “staying calm” was at all easy at the moment.
She felt so alone. What was she supposed to do, with something like this? How was she supposed to carry on, day after day, when her father’s body had been set on fire and burned until it was nothing but ash only a few hours prior? Yet, that was exactly what she had to do: carry on.
I asked you to stay, but, like usual, that was too much. When I asked too much o you, you’d sigh, your breath smelling of stale cigarettes and regret. I have my fair share of regrets, but you aren’t one of them.
bent.
bent like a fishing wire dad used to yell at me for tying wrong
bent like the twisted word we called family.
bent like my bones and my soul after he left
why couldn’t you stay
why couldn’t you stay
why couldn’t you have stayed?
“No!” she screeched, her hand reaching out and wrapping tightly around a frail wrist. “You can’t go! I need you here, with me! Please!”
Her tears streamed freely down her face, dotting the scratchy hospital sheet below. The old woman smiled. “I’m sorry.”
She knelt by the radiator in the room and inspected the flecks of white paint that had chipped off. Her finger spooned the Canadian penny out of her fraying jean pockets, and she placed it gently underneath the radiator, close enough to the wall to keep it hidden.
The penny would stay here forever, or until the next owners vacuumed the room very thoroughly. But Yael would go. She had to go.
Stay with me in this time of need
My soul is losing hope
I have lost the will to stand, and the faith to move on.
I fear my death is soon approaching
A death of choice not of ending time
As I stand here leaving my loved ones behind.
For the rest of Lisa’s stay, the weather was terrible; the rain came down in aggressive, impatient spurts, and in some parts of the city, the flooding was so bad that streets were closed for hours on end. Lisa decided to keep to herself in the hotel, watching TV, feeling the last bits of her soul dwindling away with each rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond.
“Stay,” she whispered, tugging at the hem of his sleeve. “Stay,” the trees breathed, swaying in their soup of watery gray sky. “Stay,” the flowers murmured, nodding together among the railroad tracks, the heaps of vines and splintered wood that rotted among the tall weedy grass. “Stay.” The lines ran down the underside of her arm and joined to create a set of tracks, an empty railroad with no train. She would follow it until her feet grew sore and her eyes ran wet with dew, but still she walked.