Last week, the Miami Herald shuttered its building on the bay.

Located at One Herald Plaza, the beige box on the water is affectionately known as 1HP. Conference room meetings were interrupted by someone spotting dolphins. Water spouts could be seen forming from the cafeteria windows. Depending on the person, the building was either a testament to architecture done without aesthetics in mind, or an ideal place to do journalism.

We’ve asked a few of the authors of standout poems for our That’s So Miami project to explain the inspiration behind their work. Find the winners of our contest and more entries here.

  I’m from Miami

Can you say that?

Not many can

Some came by raft

The water’s warm

The people mostly cold

By wearing limited clothes

They can be very bold

English often coming

after Spanish, spoken first

Even Creole is common

Jason Leon said he has two regrets about slicing the head off the longest Burmese python recorded in Florida:

He wishes he didn’t have to slay the beast, and he wishes his bedroom walls were big enough to mount the snake’s skin.

“I’m actually really mad I had to kill it,” Leon, 23, said Monday.

“But at one point it coiled around both of my legs and my waist, and I wasn’t going to take a chance on letting that thing get to my neck.”

Year-round sun, miles of oceanside roadways, few changes in elevation: South Florida should be a paradise for even the most casual of bicyclists. But the state is also home to plenty of thoroughfares with posted speeds in excess of 50 mph., three lanes of traffic in each direction and lots of traffic lights. Not exactly a recipe for safe and happy cycling. 

RELATED: How Much Do You Walk? Livability In South Florida

When devastation on the scale of what we are seeing in Oklahoma City hits, the whole world feels the pain.

Especially in Miami, where we have had our city leveled and destroyed at various times in our history, notably Hurricane Andrew in August of 1992, which we recently revisited in a radio documentary.

I am not a Latina. I am a middle-aged white guy whose salsa dancing embarrasses my Venezuelan-born wife. But because she is a Latina, and because my teen-aged daughter is half Latina, I take more than passing interest in how popular culture portrays Latinas. And these days I’m annoyed, because the most popular Latina image out there is, well, almost as embarrassing as my salsa dancing.

It’s an image, in fact, that represents a setback for Latinas.

Like many young professionals, 30-year-old Chad Scott had second thoughts about his job.

He was a CPA with accounting giant Ernest & Young for more than six years before becoming an internal auditor with Miami-based Burger King International. But something was missing.

"I wanted a life I could live without anxiety," said the Pembroke Pines native, recalling all the times he was chained to a desk during tax season and wouldn't see the sun for days.