Stay unruined (the adult novel-in-progress)

She wanted to tell him that there were harder things, more pressing things.  She wanted to say that a poem couldn’t save you in the end, that you lived your poems alone.  She wanted to tell him that he was young still, young and at least partly unruined.   Stay unruined, she wanted to say.  She didn’t.  One more thing she would come to regret.  The sun had started to drop, or the shadows were blue, or the weather was changing.  Something was off— 

— from the adult novel-in-progress