Once a upon a time, I took a creative writing. I bored people with my words about things I didn't care about, while I stored away the words that hit home. Other students bored me with their words while others blew me out of water with their raw talent.
We also read lots poetry about love, break ups, and pain. My professor was in a rough patch of his relationship. It pained him dearly.
Our "textbook" was "The Hell with Love: Poems to Mend a Broken Heart"edited by Mary D. Esselman and Elizabeth Ash Velez. It was full of pain, resent, anger, and regret. At nineteen, those poems of pain did not move me. I barely understood what they meant or let alone identify the feelings of the poems. I read my notes written on hallmark heart-shaped "love" sticky note, I see how clueless I was about the words I was reading. I also had failed to see the irony of heart- shaped sticky notes in a poetry book about heartbreak.
One poem did stick out and I understood it at once. I thought I would share it.
"Oh, When I Was in Love with You"
By A.E. Housman
Oh, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.
And now the fancy passes by,
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they'll say that I
Am quite myself again.
