Her Hungry Love - A Poem

Her beauty, her allure,
Natural it was in its visionary,
Stunning it was,
for it immobilized my rationality.
Blinded by love, at first sight,
Ever and anon, endless repetitions, endless infatuations,
Drawing the breath from my lungs,
Every single time, and anon.

Her emotioned eyes she showed me,
And her bright white teeth she displayed,
Sharper now in my memory.
She hid her true self away from me,
She hid her real self away from me,
She was never who she was represented to be,
She dwelt in a bright darkness that surrounded me.

It consumed me, or it tried.
I fought it, and I died—
Over and over, a reliving death.
It was a gourmet, and gluttonous.
The gingerbread house in disguise,
Walls sugared with lies,
Sweetness masking cruelty,
A feast built for the consumption of innocence.

Love consumes, if that love is not the loving kind,
But the needing kind, the feeding kind, the devouring kind.
It eats away at the fabric of the mind,
Soulless in its eagerness,
Delighting in its deviant appetites,
Cruelty seasoning the recipe,
Finding delicious its depravities’.

She wrote her recipes,
Not to me, but to herself.
I did not realize it until it was upon me—
Taste-testing as she went along.
Small indignities blindly ignored.

She ate her fill of me.
I died a little more each day,
Until the day I could die no further,
Not without dying bodily.

My soul, my heart, my mind—
Forever scarred by her feedings.
My body scarred by my own hands,
Clawing at eyes, tearing at ears,
Trying to silence the sound,
Trying to blind the sight.
But her feedings were loud inside my soul,
And there were no corners left to go.

I hid myself away from myself,
Casting blame upon myself,
Confessing to sins I never did.

She lied to my eyes.
She lied to my ears.
She lied to my heart and soul.
She lied—and I loved her.

I loved her until I died,
Over and over and over again,
Until nothing of me was left
But husk and skin.

She moved on to fresher feeding grounds,
So effortlessly, she moved on with her smile,
Immediate in her new interest, her new menu,
For who remembers a banqueted buffet?
Cheap, easy, unmemorable.

The eating of me was easy,
For I had been in love.
Even today I do not hate her,
But I fear her smile more than all else.

I pray never to see her again,
But the hollow inside,
Sometimes it dreams it to be.

Her eyes would be filled with love—
Love for me, the banquet.
And I, replenished, might love her again,
Blind and deaf and dumb,
And once again dying,
Over and over,
Until I am gone,
Once again.

Love can be blind.
Love can also be… hungry,
And only nourishment for one.

Copyright December 2025 M. W. Van Dyke
All Rights Reserved

The Winter of My Life - A Poem

 

The winter of my life,
how it blew in so subtly,
quietly, and deviously.

It took away, it drained away, it drove away, it sapped away—
the heat, the warmth, the burning desires
of many things, of most things.

Leaving empty, cold, the person I wanted to be,
or dreamed to be. Desired to be. Chose to be.

Cold dreams. Cold desires. Cold purposes.
Still there, still lingering. Whispering.
Calling to me, but my drive is gone.

Once I was a driven person,
now I am chauffeured,
a passenger in my own life.

I do not steer the wheel, it steers me.
I do not choose where I am going,
for I know where that road will end.
It was chosen for me.

I fight against it at times.
Sometimes I recover some of my heat,
my passions, limited, arise once more.

Warm they feel. Warm they seem.
Hypothermia can feel warm, they say.
I believe it to be true,
for my new beginnings always end… cold.

My soul remembers. It builds fires within.
My mind remembers. It stirs the embers.
My lips remember, say the words. Mean them.
My eyes remember, though they don’t see clearly anymore.
My hands are told they remember, but they fail in quality.
They are not strong anymore.

The winter of my life is everlasting, for now.
I keep moving so I do not freeze in place.
That only extends the winter evermore.

I do not envy the young, the springtime child,
for I know they are rushing towards winter,
and the chill that comes to all.

I envy not their passions,
or their energies,
or their drives,
or their capabilities.
Not even their potentials.

What I envy is their ignorance.
For their winter seems to them so very far away,
as once mine did,
seemingly only yesterday.

Only yesterday was a far season away.
Winter reminded me of it all—
the spring, the summer, and the fall.

Winter reminds me, gives me the memories,
shows me the way… leading to itself.

My winter was always there.
Waiting for me.

Copyright December 2025 M. W. Van Dyke
All Rights Reserved

Surviving the Move

         Moving day was rough. I’d been packing and organizing for days, getting checks sorted for the prorated rent and the new apartment. Everything seemed lined up — until I checked my email and saw a Security/Fraud Alert from PNC. They had sent it at 4:15 p.m. with a deadline to call back by 8:46 p.m. I didn’t see it until much later. When I looked at my account, I saw they had returned the first rent check for “suspicious signature.” I haven’t written a check in years, so of course it looked unusual to them. That left me stuck: the apartment complex wouldn’t get their money, and I couldn’t reach the fraud branch until morning. Meanwhile, movers were scheduled for 9 a.m., keys weren’t available until 9, and I still had to get Dad up and ready. I authorized the second check just in case they flagged that one too, but I’ll still have to rewrite the first check once the complex gets it back — and probably pay penalties for the delay. Not the kind of problem you want on top of a move.

The good part: the movers showed up — two young guys from Cardinal Moving. They hauled everything into our new “mirror image” apartment. Same layout, reversed, with odd differences in shapes and sizes. The complex covered the move since they forced us out, and I tipped the movers $50 each. Worth it. They laughed at my jokes too, which made the day lighter.

Mary Ann, our aide, arrived just as they finished. She organized Dad’s bathroom and stayed after her shift to help me tackle the mountain of leftover stuff. We worked for hours. She’s back tomorrow, which is a relief.

By midnight, I was still shuttling kitchen and bedroom items. I had set up the cable box for Dad, but the Wi‑Fi and internet wouldn’t activate. Only the living room outlet was wired to work; the bedroom outlet was dead. Spectrum is scheduled to come tomorrow between 2–3 p.m. to fix it. For now, I dragged the modem and router into the living room, and thankfully my PC runs on Wi‑Fi. Proof: you’re reading this.

I was sore and exhausted, and that’s when I remembered the golden rule of moving: make the bed first. I had forgotten it earlier in the day, but finally stopped, set up the bed, and made it. Hours later, when I couldn’t stand anymore, it was there waiting — the one piece of comfort in the middle of chaos. I collapsed into it and slept five hours straight. When I woke, I crept out, finished the last tasks, vacuumed, emptied trash, filmed a walk‑through, and turned in the keys. Done.

Now comes the fallout: the returned check, possible charges for “stained walls” (a decade‑long saga), and the reality of unpacking. Mary Ann texted she’s fine except for a backache. I, meanwhile, hurt everywhere. And I’m already spotting complications: suction grab bars don’t stick to these shower stalls, no medicine cabinets, and no towel racks inside the shower/tub. There’s one outside in the bathroom, but that doesn’t help with drying mats or keeping towels within reach while bathing. Instead, they added a little decorative shelf that’s useless for us. Designer nonsense.

But we did it. We moved. We survived. Now we keep surviving. And I finally see what “structural changes” they wanted: open‑concept fads, fewer carpets, trendy showers. Someone at corporate decided uniform style mattered more than stability. So people get uprooted for fashion. Welcome to the modern world.