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Prickly hearts.

Blue and orange flame love. Searing love. Scorching love.
Hungry, gnawing, constantly craving love.
Chocolate, marshmallows, melting, luxuriously dripping.
Saccharine love.
Love that bites and chews and sucks and savors and gulps.
Satiating, quenching, filling.
Hot berry pie love, caramel cake love, velvety icing love.
Filled, layered, frosted, can’t wait to devour.
Ice cream and cherry-on-top love. Whipped cream.
Gluttonous, greedy, can’t get enough love.
Bonbons, macarons, Marie Antoinette confections and pink champagne, bubbly love.
Sticky amber honey, lavender, agua de azahares, fragrant love.
Paper-cut and lemon juice love.
Under the skin, cut-to-the-quick, stinging.
Hiccupping love. Heartburn love. Nauseous love.
Drunken, aching, choking.
Chamomile tea, tiny cube of sugar, soothing love.
Warm, still, pool of gold; gentle lullaby and dreamless sleep love.
Root cellar love, dark, dank, buried.
Forgotten icebox drawer, stale bread, molding cheese.
Blushing apple, falling, rotting, worming.
Burnt toast, fallen soufflé, curdled custard love.
Extinguished love, white ashen coals, wisp of smoke.
Bony, famished, gum-in-hair love.
End of the feast love. Scraps and bones and crumbs, flies and mangy dogs.