The One I Love

The one I love fills up my journal pages.

   It makes me sing to hear her say my name.

I have been chasing after her for ages.

   Each time we get close, it’s always the same:

She tells me I’m the one she’s thinking of;

   She tells me that she cares—that she adores me;

And waits until I offer her my love,

   Then takes somebody else home, and it floors me.

It kills me. Kills me. It plants something dead

   Inside my heart—a hole; a growth; a cancer—

That poisons every pure hope in my head

   Into dead-end despair that has no answer

      Except what will forever make me grieve:

      The one I love’s the one I have to leave.

Copyright 2017 Matthew J Wells