Valentine’s Day Reminder
by Carolyn Scarbrough
We’ve had a lot of years. Still, I do not want
some forlorn, sarcastic, let’s ignore Valentine’s Day
day. Nor do I want the fat ballooning greeting card hearts on
every surface kind of love.
Give me this hula-hooping love that rises and falls,
spins its tediously annoying beads one day
and crashes to the floor on others.
Some may not think this is so amazing.
Lets face it…tonight is the coldest night of the year,
the children treat our bedroom like a train station
coming in when we want them to go,
forgetting their stuff when they leave.
Our cozy king size bed is littered with cracker crumbs, a
stuffed dog and a book about bugs. This
is the place they come to cry or vomit or wedge in
between us in the dread of night.
Outside, the moon is like a streetlight shining over
the dormant garden. Compost warms the bed
that held the lettuce that thrived, just as we left for
vacation. So we gave it all away.
Sometimes, we can’t even speak. Sometimes
we laugh during sex. It’s night. The electric blanket
has the bed just right. Someone knows, she’s banging
at the door. We have something she wants. We
keep forgetting that what she wants is right here—
though we give it away and away
and yet it is here, knocking, knocking.
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- | Carolyn Scarbrough
Carolyn Scarbrough has published in Gulf Coast, Poet Lore, Sundog, Tar River Poetry, Conduit, Connecticut River Review, High Desert Journal, Minnesota Review, and The Southeast Review. She has an MFA from the Bennington College Writing Seminars, works as a pediatric ICU nurse, and is the mom to five kids, two dogs and the cat. Basically, she says, she writes despite all the reasons to not write, much like a willful child!