The poem “Seeing” popped into my head while I was reflecting upon the way I felt about a man who told me he loved me…and then who chose to not act upon his feelings.

I eventually came to believe that he said he was in love with me just for the “thrill” of it and in order to stroke his own ego.

Because he speaks a lot about the subject of love, I wrote this poem in response to what, I thought, was his hypocrisy. In the relatively brief interaction I had with him, my own ideas about love changed quite a lot, and I began to think of him as a used-car salesman.

Sometimes an idea for a poem will start rattling around in my head in a way that becomes very, very distracting.

The only way to make the rattling go away is for me to…write the poem.