Whenever it rains
I see her lying before me,
vulnerable atop a picnic table.

Love isn't always a titanic,
more often then not it's subtle
like hundreds of little life boats
bringing us all to safety.

I find those subtle hints
of her honest love
floating towards me
whenever I start to sink.

I wear that shirt she got me,
I come home to a made bed
and folded laundry,
I see her letters and notes
on my mirror,
her face pops up on my phone
and when I answer all I can say is
"I love you too."

Her hair is buckwheat, straight,
hanging with the ease of
an assisted suicide.
And the smear, red and from
ear to ear, shows what she cannot:
that beauty is fluid and that we've forgot.

Sun-freckled and speckled
with cheap, off-brand gloss --
she is the monologue of
an anxious man across
the girl in the catalog, who
wore the Fall before the fall.