The Poet

A dead poet once called her a serial kisser with heartbreaker eyes.

He died quietly while she was falling elsewhere
into the candy floss of love and daydreams that he felt only heroes could withstand.

She woke up the day they found him
smiling with another man and thinking of nothing like death
when he turned everything he'd ever said into words frozen between quotation marks
and every straight line broken.

She turned her occasionally dark thoughts onto matters of mortality for a moment
and let herself wallow in this new kind of loss until it fell away of its own accord
leaving only fragmented memories and oddly lit scenes
like the books he meant to write
and tear jerking movies.

She saved the letter where he told her how hard he wished and how much he cared;
hoped he had thrown out the letter of her reply where she tried so kindly to say
no
again.

She moved on;
wiser with life,
and older by days,
and rarely grasping
what she had once meant.