to the woman who disparaged my poem due to personality conflicts 

I said: look at this way.

you’ve been sacrificed on the altar of pure poetry.

the problem here is you wanted a pretty poem;

something like you'd find in the "special occasions"

rack at the pharmacy. 

you knew I wrote fractured poems, dumpster poems,

poems better suited for the large intestine rather than the heart.

you wanted a valentine heart. a make-believe heart. you wanted

a two-dimensional heart.

the poem’s heart is a slimy muscle beating blood beneath

the chest cavity feeding the veins and arteries of the body

as unapologetically naked as biology should be. 

that’s my kind of heart; a bloody sticky, gooey apparatus.

but that's me. you know,––  incurably romantic.