Valentine’s Day makes me uneasy. I am unsure of this moment where society says, “Declare your love now.” I am not normally obedient. I do not see why I should be obedient now.

But what I am happy to do here is gather up some thoughts of how I love. I will pick two poems that have often reminded me of Himself. I don’t often share poems but I know you guys are a literary lot. I think you can take it.

The first is-

Renouncement

by Alice Meynell

I must not think of thee; tired yet strong,

I shun the thought that lurks in all delight-

The thought of thee-and on the blue Heaven’s height,

And in the sweetest passage of a song.

Oh, just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng

This breast, the thought of thee waits, hidden yet bright;

But it must never, never come in sight;

I must stop short of thee the whole day long

But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,

When night gives pause to the long watch I keep

And all my bonds I needs must loose apart

Must doff my will as raiment lain away,-

With the first dream that comes with the first sleep

I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.

This poem reminds me of us, all of us. It reminds me of the secrets we keep, about how we love and what we love. We find a space to express our love and the way that we love, not just in our dreams and our sleep but here, in these places.

This space is where I can speak out about this love, it is where I can show its form. I do love him. I know we are miles apart but I think of him, a thread through the maze, the way through. I love him.

I do talk about him in my day. People know his name and who he is. But they do not know who I am when I am with him, they do not know how this love transforms me. That is the secret we keep and the truth I tell in the night to him in a whisper and to all of you here.

This next poem, I pondered about. I think it is written from a woman to a woman and Dev is no woman and has no red curls. But he came to me after an event, not a man, had almost wiped me out. I was lost in a well of grief and the small circle of sky was shrinking a little more every day.  I did not even care; I knew I was losing myself but it did not matter.

This poem reminds me of the comfort of his love, the almost paternal care he offers and how he swept into every part of my life. There is a gentle comfort a girl has in friendship with another girl and I get that from him, just as much as I get the sexual joy and the dominance from him. For the hair, read the power of his words, how he expresses ideas, himself and how he wrote me before we even met.

Magnificat

by Michele Roberts

oh this man
what a meal he made of me
how he chewed and gobbled and sucked
in the end he spat me all out

You arrived on the dot, in the nick

Of time, with your red curls flying

I was about to slip down the sink like grease

I nearly collapsed, I almost

Wiped myself out like a stain

I called for you and you came, you voyaged

Fierce as a small archangel

You declared the birth of a new life

In my kitchen there was an annunciation

And I was still, awed by your hair’s glory

you commanded me to sing of my redemption

oh my friend, how
you were mother for me, and how
I could let myself lean on you
comfortable as an old cloth
familiar as enamed saucepans
I was a child again, pyjama’ed
in winceyette, my hair plaited, and you

listened, you soothed me like cake and milk
you listened to me for three days, and I poured
it out, I flowed all over you like wine, like oil
you touched the place where it hurt
at night, we slept together in my big bed
your shoulder eased me towards dreams

when we met, I tell you
it was a birthday party, a funeral
it was body communion
between women, a Visitation
it was two old she goats butting
and nuzzling each other in the smelly fold.

Finally, I would like to simply say that I love him. Love is inconvenient, it is haphazard. Love does not obey the rules it ought to and rides roughshod over the rules passed down to us when we were children and read books of how it would be and should be. Love is uncaring of location or situation. But this shocking, blustering, earthquake of a love has transformed me.

I hope that you are with your Valentine. I hope that you can dream of your Valentine, even if that is a shape, unformed as yet, a hope or a dream of a Valentine. I hope that you love, that you are loved and that you are open to love because I know that whoever you are and whatever your story is – you deserve love.

Would you like another?