I learned that love was sarcastic and love yelled when love wanted to.
I learned that love wasn't always happy but it was always beautiful.
I learned that the way love screamed your name at the top of its lungs and the way love laughed at your jokes even when they weren't funny that love really loved you.
I learned that love can come in many different forms, love can be peaceful, love can be hectic, but nobody can define love because it's never the same no matter where you go.
I learned that love doesn't always last and when love leaves love doesn't have mercy on your heart, love drags a blade across your chest and leaves you to drown in it.

It has been
awhile.
My tongue went
missing,
a tape recorder
of things people
already said shoved
into its place.
The blood in my being
is heated with the love of my significant,
without him my heart is
cold.

I have left you far behind,
The flotsam and the jetsam
Washed up on the shore.

And you are pleased,
I’m sure, with this place
That you have chosen.

I’ve dubbed my wastebasket the wishing well
Well I wish for nothing more than a dime of
creativity to hit me,  ripple across my wrinkles
Knocking some sense in,
sink beneath my pores
So swallow my codswallop wishing well
because this is another petty penny for you.

© Matthew Harlovic

Trash.

You called my items trash. So what if you find them useless? So what if even they turn out to be useless to me? You still have no right to tell me what of mine is worth it or not.

Are you saying I'm trash?

Am I too wild and crazy for you to deal with?

You see me as nothing but a child, and that burns me, cuts deep, whatever metaphor of pain you want to use in this awful discussion. You look at me and see irresponsibility, but what actually it is, is difference. I am different than you. I know you don't normally have to deal with people who don't think like you do, correction, you don't normally like dealing with people, but you chose to deal with me.

If you can't simply accept me for who I am, as other friends have done before you, then I guess its time for you to go.

I began this blaming myself, kicking myself, for ******* up yet again. Always the ****-up, that Grace. But you know what? I'm getting my **** together the best way I can, and if you don't like how I function, then that *****.

I can't deal with people who can't accept me. Not right now, actually, thinking about it, not ever, really.

I have to be me right now. There is no other way, and if you cannot accept that, then I guess I cannot accept you.

Leave the undesirable and go live elsewhere.

I allow the words to burn through my brain
but I can't seem to light the love letters.
I found your necklace in my drawer,
a metronome swinging to the tears I cried.
And your shirt abandoned on my floor
I can't look but I know exactly what it smells like
Smoke and cologne and you.
The old pink carnations still loyal on my table
It reminds me how you never liked flowers
and the bouquets you picked for me anyway.
Artifacts solid and real,
palpable, physical proof of you and I.
But I want to know
Where do the dreams go
and the memories
What about our kisses
I can feel them in this room
Potent and hypnotizing
and I don't know how to throw that untouchable piece of us away.