One last shot with poetry. I wrote this one well over 20 years ago about what I felt was my first true love. It wasn't. It really holds true for the actual first true love I had and lost, though. For any person's first experience with failed love, I think.

First Love Conditions

It will hurt you

You’ll forget about it, and it will slam into you

It will open up your wounds again

Make you bleed all over yourself

and it will piss in the wounds

It will fuck you up, again and again

Then leave you panting, gasping for breath,

but wanting more

You’ll hunger to swallow its poison again

Even though it’s already killing you

It will hold you up, and drop you on your head

and stir up your brain on the ground below

One year, two, five, its all there

Whipping you when its home

Tearing out your life as it leaves

At your job, where you play, with your friends

There is no release, it stays with you

You’ll never forget it for long, you’ll never be the same

You need it to make you bitter enough to be real

It’s there for the long haul, buddy

So you had better get used to it

Fred Holstine