I don’t know*
your pain,
I don’t know
how you feel.
I can only infer it
from your behavior
and the time it takes
for you to heal.

© Matthew Harlovic

I’ve lived, I’ve learned,
I’ve shifted through patterns.
I took a bad turn and acted like nothing mattered
but I found myself in the mix of the matter
and found I’m not limited by my lines of Saturn.

© Matthew Harlovic

split tongues spit two verses
pondering where the connection between heaven and earth is
hoping sleeping in clouds would hurt less than than the dirt did

she loves me,
she loves me not,
she loves me
or so I thought*.

© Matthew Harlovic

A monarch may not be able to see its wings,
but we see them, and they are a beautiful thing.

© Matthew Harlovic

Love is not fear, and fear is not love.
This belonging to another, being psychologically
nourished by another, depending on another -
in all this there is anxiety, fear, jealousy, guilt,
and as long as there is fear, there is no love.

© Matthew Harlovic

I walked through the Harrison
Street Fair earlier in the afternoon
with the expectation and angst
you would be there as well.
Much like the year before, vendors
and artists were sprawled about the
street from Cuyler Avenue to Humphrey.
Rough-and-ready goods and chattels were
perched on display, but my eyes were fixed
on the crowd. I thought I would walk into
you and your new boyfriend, but you were
nowhere to be found. Perhaps we missed each
other; perhaps you never went to the fair.
But be that as it may or may not,
I thought we would walk into each other.

© Matthew Harlovic