nobody warns you about the first boy who tells you he wants to marry you.

nobody warns you about the tangible shift in the universe when he parts his lips to smile.

nobody warns you about the poetry he'll write you or how your knees will weaken or the melancholy hidden between the layers of his laughter.

nobody warns you that miles will morph into lightyears and you will curse the ocean for being the only thing that keeps his fingers from resting between yours.

nobody warns you about the day his sweater doesn't smell like him anymore.

nobody warns you that human hands are incapable of holding a person together.

nobody warns you that sometimes love is not enough, no matter how much you wish it was.

nobody warns you about the crippling nostalgia that renders you breathless.

nobody warns you about the nights when silence screams for your blood.

nobody warns you about the crater that forms in your chest in the middle of the night when he doesn't answer.

nobody warns you about how it's going to feel when he tells you he's in love with someone else.

nobody warns you that forever is a lie.

- m.f.

i'm patiently waiting for the first breath
of lukewarm air to my swollen lungs
that heave to the sound of crickets chirping
and fire burning
i'm abandoning my frozen corpse
that lays here in purgatory
to let in a light
that pumps clean blood and fresh air
so that i'm no longer forced
to breathe for a life that i don't want to live

We are fighting about religion.
You ask me when I lost my faith in God.
I see myself, ****** lipped and angry,
ask you why it should matter.
At this point, I shake to the corner of your bed,
and you are crying, your black hair leaking,
you never expected me to judge you for being a Mormon.
I tell you,
you are the first boy I ever loved who believes in God.
You grab my hands, twist them under your blankets,
ask me if I've ever felt God lean quietly the way you do every morning.
So I pray with you.
Leave your house.
Don't tell you I am trying to bend the crucifixes in your mind.

The early bird croons
seducing the morning worm.
Mother cries softly.

© Matthew Harlovic

I never liked winter
I loved to watch snow settle on the ground
In unfair uneven proportions
Decorating the space outside my window
But then it becomes gray
Painted in a heavy shaking hand on the trees and in the gutters
Like cigarette ash or crushed Xanax

The Hunt


The walls convulse,
under her thighs, his mouth, their friction.                            
Her hisses hammer the door,                                                
stretches into a crouch.                                              
Her legs quiver with the rush.                                                
She is all copper and scales,                                                  
hair black and thirsty.
It shimmers like the fury of his cheating hands,                    
it chokes him,
drops him to his knees.
Her eyes snake-bright and wild,
springs clean as arrows.
Twirl around his throat.
She plucks heart and liver first,
peels them to bits.
She rules by the ****** of her hips
leaves him empty as lust.
Her rampant thighs jolt,
force him to beg for more
of this succulent venom.
He slings his insides over his shoulder
lets them drip over himself,
he doesn't flinch at the sticky drizzle.
Her stilettos scrape his bones.
She snags the shavings,
they are her trophies
the thrill of the hunt,
proof of her savage prowess.
This medusa-violence,
breaks rooms, love, him,
drapes them down her back
like bed sheets.
She is that myth ,
husbands try their hardest to hide.  
They wash the sheets, flip the bed,
wipe the sweat off the kitchen counter,
take two showers,
and too many deep breaths.
The door snaps shut behind her.
Dad tells me,
he didn’t sleep
with that copperhead.
I nod.

I think about the way I would hold you
If you were with me at night
The gentle way my hands would fold themselves
Across your hips
And the soft canvas of your skin
Brushing against the drying paint of mine
The way my hands would fall into the grooves
Of your collarbone
Like snow falling on tree branches
My fingers like snowflakes fluttering down
On your neck
And how I’d carefully cover your mouth with my palm
So no one would hear your screams
As I throttled you until your neck snapped