Valentine, Valentine

Valentine, valentine you arrive in a town car with a chauffered envelope, scattered pieces of you enrolled in schoolyards like a recess of paper vanity, litter, old with red-rimmed "loves," red-rhymed lies in lace. The verses come, rising as easily as long-stemmed snakes in bloom where swamps settle down and drowse by dawn, a night of secrets slid out of drawers like knives nesting, a choice of chimes and slums overrun by bejeweled heartbreakers. What a lovely winter, almost skipping February.