The Fraud

It’s very easy to write a poem

about love. It’s also easy to write

a poem about how hard love is. It’s

much harder to live love. It’s even

harder to live love when love itself

becomes hard. On those days I just

sit staring out the window, not writing,

feeling like a fraud. A fraud with no

words left to say, whose previous

lines have dissipated into dank

meaninglessness. I once wrote poems

about how love is great and life is

good. Well not now, it isn’t. Not here.

This is the kind of love that’s hard

to talk about. Leave me alone.

Don’t talk to The Fraud. Don’t go near

The Fraud, lest you yourself become

a stitch in this new tapestry. Best

simply to leave The Fraud be. He’ll

come back around, eventually.

Joshua Seigal