This book started as an art project.
I had opened a tiny gallery called Gigantic. It was a labor of love that lost money every month. Our best-selling show was our second-to-last—sales almost covered rent.
For our last show my friend and then-intern Jason Edward Davis suggested a show of art on matchboxes. I said great. He told me to make a couple pieces. I started writing love haiku.
The idea for the piece was to make a little website—I'd write a bunch of haiku and post each one to the site. Each poem would have its own URL. I'd write each URL on a little slip of paper and wrap a slip around each match in the box. The buyer could then read the poems at their leisure, but each poem could only be read once—the web server would delete the file containing the poem before the page was sent to the reader. So, like a match, each poem was single-use. Because haiku are to poetry what matches are to fire. And because love, like a match's flame, flares up and burns out quickly.
That's how I felt at the time, anyway. It was a tumultuous time. I had broken up with a girlfriend, dated a few, and had recently started seeing another. That one and I just kept seeing each other and now we're married. And I wrote love haiku through the whole process, from our first date through our first kiss as husband and wife.
So this book started as an art project but it grew into a love story. I hope you enjoy reading it. I enjoyed living it.
