Valentine

Valentine

by Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.

It promises light

like the careful undressing of love.

Here.

It will blind you with tears

like a lover.

It will make your reflection

a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.

Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,

possessive and faithful

as we are,

for as long as we are.

Take it.

Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,

if you like.

Lethal.

Its scent will cling to your fingers,

cling to your knife.

We are having a small Valentines, a hiding Valentines day. I am sick and I am drinking boiled herbs and trying to stay awake. Onions seem appropriate for today.

The Gift

Our
Union is like this:

You feel cold
So I reach for a blanket to cover
Our shivering feet.

A hunger comes into your body
So I run to my garden
And start digging potatoes.

You ask for a few words of comfort and guidance,
I quickly kneel at your side offering you
This whole book-
As a gift.

You ache with loneliness one night
So much you weep

And I say,
Here's a rope,
Tie it around me,

I will be your companion
For life.

-Hafiz

Picture of the party David and I met at, it looks so sunny compared to now

At North Farm

Domesticity

In the May of 2009 I read Isabel Gillies Happens Every Day and was blown away by a section of At North Farm she quoted:

Somwhere someone is traveling furiously toward you.
At incredible speed, traveling day and night,
Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes.
But will je know where to find you,
Recognize you when he sees you,
Give you the thing he has for you?

It made my toes tingly. I don't really know what it means but that first line, the line about someone traveling furiously toward you, that really rocked my world. I loved it. I sort of believed it. That someone was traveling furiously toward me. And then in June I met David, then he went to Europe for the summer. And in August we talked on his porch all night long and a week after that we basically new we were going to marry each other (but we didn't talk about it to each other yet) and then in December we were talking about it. And in January we were engaged already and then in July we were married. After 11 months of being together. And now, January of 2011, we live in Durham with our two dogs and a cat. Wow.

And it's working really well.

I don't normally tell people that we knew each other for 11 months before we were married and five months before we got engaged because, ya know, it's nuts. Completely nuts. But ya know.

Having a Coke With You

I think Joanna Goddard had it read at her wedding (maybe someone else?) and I think it's super lovely. I kinda wish we didn't have to have bible readings at mass so we could have this.

Having a Coke with you

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluoresent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

-Frank O'Hara