What if we gave out love
like bags of candy at halloween.
What if we went door to door
and told people we love them
without ever having to say the words.
What if the whole world loved
their neighbor. And I mean just
their next door neighbor.
I see a new future for us,
A new trajectory, where we give
out our love like bags of candy
at Halloween.
TS
Do you reserve your love for me?
Yes, my dear, I do reserve my
love for you, but not you alone
I’m afraid.
I gave little pieces away
to some beautiful flowers whose
petals I collect in a jar by my bed.
I also – ashamedly – give my love
away to this dark abyss. I sit on
the edge and I throw little pennies
down to the bottom.
A penny might not seem like much,
but when you throw one or two
everyday of your life, it starts to
add up.
When I throw a copper piece now,
I can hear it hit all its brothers and
sisters with a metallic clank.
It reminds me of something, the noise.
It reminds me that while I want to give
you all of my everything, there’s a
small fortune sitting at the bottom of a
dark pit, that says otherwise.
“Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that’s lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.”
It came in the mail.
A simple white envelope
containing one white card,
stating that you will be married
on the 21st of May on a farm
in Southwestern Ohio
to someone
other than me.
-TS
I don’t want confusing love,
the kind that stabs at my stomach.
I want peaceful love,
the kind that scratches my head
and understands.
I lost a poem
It might have been me at my best
It might have been my peak
I worried some nobody would find it
And become rich and famous
Off my words
But then I found your poem
On a shelf, in a hundred year old
Home in Ohio
And I realized it didn’t matter who
Finds my poem and the others like it –
Because it will probably be someone
The exact someone,
Who needed to hear it
I found a love letter when I was helping my mom move. It is from a man to his girlfriend. I think it was right before he was going to propose.
“If you never took that flight to America. If I never moved back to Cincy after school. If you never got that job. If you didn’t go to the bar that Saturday night in November. If it wasn’t for a friend of mine’s birthday. If I had walked past you instead of asking you to dance…then we never would have met.”
If you lived in Fairfax, OH at some point and are missing a poem to your lady, I found it. I know what it’s like to lose a poem.
Light,
Soft,
Delicate,
and Strong.
Tyler Strittmatter 