We used to celebrate the fifteenth of May
as the day we first started dating. Though
you thought the fifteenth was the correct date,
we did not start our relationship in May.
We started in June, a few weeks
after my graduation. The fifteenth
of May was the day we first started dating,
but we only dated for a week, and then
you dropped the let’s stay friends bit.  
A month later, we tried again,
and that try lasted for two years.
Perhaps the superstition of our first fifteenth
brought us to where we are, perhaps not.
But the fifteenth of May is in a few weeks,
so where are you, my friend?

© Matthew Harlovic

The way you hold his hand I
                   Look down at mine and I
              Know you could never
                       Hold my hand that way.

You chose to love him over me
       Breaking my heart yet another time
    Bleeding me out for another rhyme
But no, I'm just raging in jealousy.

We are so compatible
       You and
              I.

But again, again, and again;
      You don't see how true I am for you,
   How much I have dedicated myself for you,
All the sacrifice I make for you.

Perhaps love is, indeed, blind.

There is a place
in you
that needs a name
but you're an absolute beginner
at naming things.
Centred in this pathos, I've never known

whether to create stillness or bitter passion.
In this, there is a sacrifice,
something to see through to the end.

The openness I sometimes extract
can break me down.
Is it better
to find a way to say it?
Would it be better to hang for it

or to forget
how the fig is fertilised?
In its sweetness,
to forget
the distaste of undermining friendship.
I have stretched myself into the past.

I have stretched my body
to see the places it could end.
Vein bubbles
from where it started,
wet bloodgasps;
sorry smear of a poem

they write your name next to.
History repeats, all that's left;
neutrality at the cost of
a better passion,
and the count of
how many ribs you have and how many you've lost.

I abuse my fingers
and still expect them to carry me through.
There's always a way
to see trauma as something to crawl into.