About the Love Poems
by Melanie Faith
The shy, overweight schizophrenic
in the blue sweater
who sometimes, while reading, tugged
at the hem of his sweater
wrote the most lyrical,
longing verse
in the entire workshop. We all wanted them
to be real in real life. We all coaxed: surely,
this part was a real part, wasn’t it?
He looked up, then
down at his hem. “No,” he smiled tenderly. “No,
I just write them. There’s no one
like this in my life.” In real life,
he made them up out of the imaginary
future; now I see with what greed
we wanted them for ourselves.
About the Author
Melanie Faith is a poet, fictionist, photographer, auntie, and professor. Her short stories were published in Red Coyote and SunLit Fiction. Her poetry most-recently appeared in Up North Lit and Meniscus and in Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review. Her photography recently appeared in Barren Magazine, Fourth & Sycamore, Harbor Review, Sum Journal, and And So Yeah. In 2018, two of her craft books were published– In a Flash!: Writing & Publishing Dynamic Flash Prose and Poetry Power (both by Vine Leaves Press and available at Amazon). Signed copies of her books are available at her Etsy shop here . Her next book, Photography for Writers, will be available in December 2019 from Vine Leaves Press.
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Editor's Note
Want more? You can check out Melanie's blog here or check out her instagram