The Heroine

Now the last hero plants her foot
in the ruined field like a small bird
falls into the ocean's story- a victim.

Who wrote this book in a language
of sadness? I think it was my father.

Now she stands, her heart cut out,
a coupon in the daily paper. How
desperately she shops for love like

vampires do. But only from the dead.

The middle of the faery tale: the child
lost in tangled shadows of herself,
a blue dress soaked in blood or dying

light, the kind that resurrects itself
the following morning. Few parables

end well. But this is her gift, the last
few lines of a lifetime narration-
the ones that save the heroine.