Valentine's Day
Once again this Valentine's Day
you gave me roses, chocolate
and sentimental cards,
as if I were still twenty.
Yet now your dear hands
are gnarled and discolored
and the voice that says, "I love you,"
is garbled and slurred.
On those long ago afternoons
when the world was sublit
with the wonder of love discovered,
we luxuriated in our bodies,
running together along the trail
traced by waves slipping up the sand,
I did not foresee this day long hence,
when our rows and rifts,
our tiffs and tempers,
would lie scattered behind us
like driftwood on the dunes,
and the sky would darken
to reveal the secrets of the cosmos,
constellations piercing through the heavens
and revelatory shooting stars.
Now as your soft flesh
melts from your bony frame,
I can see with astonished clarity
the blinding light it had concealed,
and once again,
my immeasurably precious darling,
love is blind.
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