Life is shown in black and white-
like a still-life photograph
or ink on a sheet.
At least through the lens
of a camera you can't see
broken promises or
invisible tragedy.
So next time you see me
keep your eye on the window
and I'll try to move in time
to your shutter speed.
I'll scribble you a poem
on the bottom of the creek
of a love I've never felt
and people only in my dreams.
The wind can carry my words
away with the stream-
after all,
they never did mean anything
to me.

I used to sing at the top of my lungs
and only think of colorful air
passing over my tongue
but ever since you left
every time I sing, I think of you.
You were taken from me too soon
without a chance to say a last
I-Love-You.
Sometimes it's a dull ache
but sometimes I'm doubled-over in pain
and it hits just when I think
I can finally see the sun.
Because how can the sun still shine
when its rays can't find you?
You'll never flounce through the
screen door again
on the way to your favorite
wooden bench
but you still
float in and out of my dreams
and it's such a bittersweet pleasure
to see you there.

I hate love poems
but I don't know any other way
to tell you that you're the only person
who can coax an unguarded laugh
from the lowest pits of my abdomen.
I hate love poems
but when you let me store
my kisses in the crook of your neck
I feel like maybe I could
stay there with them.
I hate love poems
but I've spent too many nights
thinking of how flowers
turn their heads to listen
every time you laugh.
I hate love poems
but I can't stop listening to
the kind of music you like, the kind
that paints life as it really is
and doesn't always rhyme-
or flow.
I hate love poems
but when the sun skims its
fingers through your hair
I find it hard to breathe steady.
I hate love poems
but you know everything about me
and you haven't left yet
and I'm awfully close to getting attached.

I hate love poems
because you're not unlike anyone else,
you just fit a little better
in the contours of my heart,
and you're not the reason I live,
you just make it a little easier
to stay above water.

I hate love poems.
But I still write them about you.

There's always that moment in a movie
when the hero finally triumphs;
when someone seemingly ordinary
does something exceedingly extraordinary
and the audience has a simultaneous thought,
"Maybe that could be me"
but the world is not a romantic,
we find we are not truly fearless.
We realize we don't all throw ourselves
in the way of the barrel of a gun,
don't run into the fire
instead of out.
Some of us only drop out of school
to support our family,
take off work every Wednesday
to visit a parent who doesn't remember us,
become a full time mother
to our child with Down syndrome.

Does that mean we're unheroic?