Happy Valentine’s Day,
He says to me
Casually
As if thinking to be
Of service in reminding me
Of the past...
Of a love that did not last.
But I cannot see
Those past years,
Of frilly chocolate hearts
And frothy cards
Without invoking tears.
The feelings sear
My soul
As I try to pretend
that I’m whole
That no part of me longs
For the days of yore
The days before
My heart was torn.
“I love you,” he said,
But did he ever mean it?
If love is counted in
the number of times
You left me alone to pine
And the number of times
you made me cry,
Perhaps.
Or if love is counted
in the number of times
You told me that
my opinions didn’t count
When mounting frustrations
would continue to mount
That I could not feel heard…
could not feel known.
That I felt…alone.
Those are my memories
Of anniversaries
Left uncelebrated,
Unremembered,
Unshone.
Of nights when you
Invited others to come
Into our home
On the night that should have been ours alone.
Of times when we talked,
Oh, all night long,
But really you talked
And I listened, seldom heard,
Seldom with anything of interest to say,
Beyond the details of the day,
Of little interest to you.
Or times when I could have talked
And you insisted on listening to a song,
As if that song would tell me what I needed to know,
Songs of love forgotten
And men betrayed
And women left afraid.
Those years when I made you
Almost my god
And buried the me
I was meant to be
Deep inside
Waiting for spring
To dig out and thaw out
And become alive once again…
Alive and a-love once more,
Younger, fresher than before.
Almost spring now,
But “Happy Valentine’s Day!”
And suddenly
Like an unpredictable weather front,
A cold snap
Moving quickly through,
I feel the half-unfrozen heart begin
To freeze back up again
To wait for a love that’s true--
Snow White waiting to awaken
With a kiss.
Yet during that cold snap I feel
A feeling of relief somehow
That relief is near,
And God is nigh
Time to leave
These frozen feelings behind
And time to be the me
That God meant me to be--
Alive and free
With a heart that lives,
With a heart that gives,
With a heart that loves,
Thanks be to the God above,
The one and only God who loves.