flies.
but memories
have an awful habit
of remaining still, frozen,
unwilling to change or be forgotten.

"Jump!" my little brother yells.
"Jump!"
I smile at him and tap the rain water
with my boot.
"No, jump!" he yells again,
splashing through the rain.
I laugh at his excitement.
"Perhaps another time," I say, and we promptly
circle around the puddle
and go on our way.

I look back on all of our conversations
and all I see are apologies.
They were all one sided.
Pleas, really.
They fell from my mouth,
and escaped through my fingers.
I lost them. They left me
to meet you.
The regret was everywhere.
I fell into its puddles often.
You said you were sorry once--
no, twice.
I will not apologize.
You fell once.
I got up twice.
If I dug deep enough maybe
I would find them again
and slowly take
my apologies back.
They shouldn't belong
to you.

I have revised love letters
to contend with the headers
to change always and forever
to thanks for the effort.

© Matthew Harlovic

he texted her.
and she waited for the jump,
the butterflies,
the weird flip her stomach
would do at the sight
of his name
on her phone.
he texted her.
she waited for a physical
reaction.
like a boiling *** of water
that overflows,
or an outlet that sparks
when someone carelessly
plugs something in.
where were the bubbles?
where were the sparks?
he texted her.
she picked up her phone.
she looked at it.
she got distracted by another
message from her friend.
he texted her.
the world kept spinning.
and that's how she knew.

what is worse for a dandelion?
to lose its soft, seedy ball of cotton,
blown into the wind
by a whispering dreamer?
or to fail in granting the wish
of a small child, too young to realize
that a dandelion is only a pretty little ****?

he's black, white,
and read all over
by acquaintances in his
circumference of people.
but no one asks,
no one takes the time,
to inquire behind
the gray mix of his
black and white appearance.
perhaps he's a light blue,
or a pretty yellow
that mistakenly ran into
some gray along the way,
but no one knows
because they'd rather spend
their sunday morning judging
a black story on a white page
than exploring the vast depth
of an intricate person.