matthew: an acrostic poem

First off, let me explain must what I'm doing here. The poem I've got for y'all today is what is called an acrostic poem, which is a poem in which (generally) the first letter of each line in a poem spells out a word or name. In this poem, I spell out the name "Matthew," yet with an "s" on the end because in my early-mid 20s, I dated two men named Matthew back-to-back with less than a 6-month gap in between the two. That, coupled with the fact that, especially while I was dating the first Matthew, they were close friends, is just a bit odd to me, even today, and will forever, in some ways, link them together in my mind (as well as with the man I was involved with after the both Matthews, but that's a story for another poem *grin*). Therefore, the "s" at the end is symbolic of the poem not necessarily being representative of one or the other of them, but of facets of each of them, and of my sort of recollection of them as encompassing and symbolizing together, more than what they do apart, since their relationships have similarities that act as major metaphors for the general state of my life at that point in time, which was both wonderful and horrific, but couldn't last, that's for sure, just as neither of these relationships ever had any real lasting power as romances. Anyway, since I'm trying to become the next Faulkner or James Joyce here with the run-on sentences, I think I'll let the simplicity of this short poem (way shorter than this intro) do the talking for me from now on . . .

*(Oh, just a quick fyi, I put a space between the first and second letter of the first word of each line so that the words that's spelled out is more clearly visible without any concentration, just to make it uber-easy)

matthew

M ust this come to its inevitable end.

A ll in all we come out good, still friends.

T here were the drunken nights when I lost you downtown,

T he drunken fights where I lost my crown.

H ow far apart we grew, then came back together.

E ven after all our debauchery we still seem better off together.

W e fit like gloves, like cuffs, like hugs. 

Some things are just meant to be love.

copyright 2007 Katherine Andrews