Once Upon a Heart

(mm-mm) I watched the hero cross the frozen lawn

With perfect timing right before the dawn He had thirty pages left

to turn it around And

swept her off the solid ground

I closed the paper spine and looked outside Just parked sedans under

a grey sky

Nobody wrote a script for how we walk by

No swelling strings, no

dramatic goodbye

Just umbrella ribs and ordinary rain

Falling in love is a trick in the ink

Something that happens while nobody thinks

Folded on page ninety-two on a shelf

It never turns out like that for anyone else (no,

not for anyone else)

We share the salt and split the morning rent

Forget the holidays and where the money went

There is no chapter where the fireworks start

Just quiet habits beating in a heart

I leave the dog-eared paperback by the bed

Believing every lie that I read

Nobody writes a poem about lukewarm tea

Or how you look away while talking to me

Yet here we are surviving another week

Falling in love is a trick in the ink

Something that happens while nobody thinks

Folded on page ninety-two on a shelf

It never turns out like that for anyone else (never turns out

like that)

Maybe the real thing is dusty and slow

Not a grand fire that burns in the snow Just leaving the

nightlight

beside the hall door

Wanting no more,

wanting no more

Just words in a binding

That stay on the shelf

(in the books,

only in the books)