Goodnight, Love. It was good.
Lisa at Lemon Gloria did an homage to this NY Times valentine for valentines' past, and I thought hers was so lovely that why not?
Boy: I was completely twitterpated over you before it was really even possible to be so. You kissed me on the cheek in kindergarten, and I played at your house. Our mothers were friends. I remember crawling to hide with you under your bed and realizing that the skirt of my dress had come up around my waist. You said "That's OK. Friends can see friends' underwear."
The First Boyfriend: In so many ways, you were the most traditional love I ever had and yet we were so young--too young to realize how little we had in common. Now you are a rocket scientist. But at 13, all I knew was that you had beautiful red hair and made me laugh and it was one of the only times in my life that I would go in for things like teddy bears in lockers and homecoming mums and the like.
You were also the first guy I met whose life was tinged with sadness. For as straightforward and seemingly normal as you were, your father had died of AIDS only a year or so before I met you.
I'll never forget the little perfectly folded square notes you passed to me between classes or the way you made me feel seen and beautiful. The strangest part is that somehow you introduced me to my dearest friend in the world, who you dated all through college. When she first met me I was the First Love, the Ex, That Blonde Girl at the Tori Amos concert getting in the way of things between you two, but many years later it is just she and I. I'll always be grateful to you for bringing her into my life. You are happily married now in Houston with your rockets, dogs, and wife.
Green-eyed Hemophiliac: Really among firsts, you were it. The one who smashed my heart to bits. Who taught me what love was. Who had a laugh like rain falling. I met you on a church choir trip when I was 16 in between my junior and senior years of high school and every other girl had a crush on you. Somehow you fell for me too. Maybe it was my blue mascara or overwrought poetry. But we spent hours propped up together on the bus so that our limbs went numb and necks ached. When we had to go back to our homes in different cities, I listened to Sarah McLachlan's "I Love You" over and over, and "Everlong" was my soundtrack home from Dumas, Texas the day I knew I probably wouldn't see you again. Your mom once answered the phone and told me she'd gone outside to find you crying. You broke up with me because long distance was too hard and put me through hell the next summer by ignoring me all through the two-week trip. It took a few years, but in college we finally worked it out and on my 21st birthday, you came to celebrate with me and one of the best gifts I got was a conversation about our relationship and the love we'd shared. It put all my doubts to rest. You're married now in Texas and seem happy, and for that I am glad.
The Crow: My college boyfriend. You are still, somehow, the longest relationship I've been in, which sometimes distresses me, and sometimes I think says more about how long the two of us were able to let our dysfunction continue. And yet, somehow, you also in my life have treated me better than any man before or since. You just didn't have the same respect for yourself. We met late nights. Or was it early mornings? I was college friends with your roommate and you were busting tires at Firestone. I'd go out late nights with her and come home and after everyone else had gone to bed, stay up with you on the patio while you sang "Blackbird" to me or something else and played guitar. You had a beautiful voice and I could listen to you for hours. We were together in a matter of weeks and it lasted two and a half years. On Halloween, you rented a fur suit without the head and I found that endearing. You are still one of the smartest people I have ever known, capable of such kindness to me, and yet, I finally left you because I couldn't stand to be with someone who was so unhappy and unwilling to find a way to change it. I also knew as long as I stayed you wouldn't find that way. You moved to Prague to teach English and started a band. You seem happy. Sometimes I miss you desperately. There is no one I wonder about more often.
Mississippi: You were like a bowl of warm oatmeal to me on a cold dreary day. Your name was warmth and home, molasses, and rainwater. In high school, you were the tall kind of awkward guy with the great smile in the back of choir. And then one day, you were at the coffee shop when I was writing poems and you didn't seem so strange anymore. But our story was always one of missed opportunities. We were always dating other people. I realized I was in love with you when I was with someone else. And the actual time we spent together in life may have only been a couple of days.
We could have been a soap opera.Over the years, we managed always to call each other at the exact moment something significant was happening even if we'd been out of touch for months or years: a child was about to be born, a relationship was ending or we were lying to ourselves about it being good. For a long time I thought we were fated, but now I think, as the Angel Stripper says in Can't Hardly Wait (from the year I graduated): "Fate. There is fate. But it only takes you so far, because once you're there, it's up to you to make it happen."
Lorca: Someone once said to me at one of the parties we were at together that when you and I were in the same space, there seemed to be electricity between us even if we were at opposite ends, not looking or talking to each other. That we seemed that connected. You were always an enigma to me, and it's only in the last few years that I've realized I must have been a mystery to you as well. Even when we were driving back from the ranch and you said you wished you had an alphabet for my eyes right before the deer ran into the road and you swerved to miss it, I always thought I was as clear as a bell. The times we shared with the other poets at the ranch were some of the most important in my life.
I'm not sure if you know it, but I always had a sense that I was going to see you. Even if I wasn't aware that's what it was. I might even think you were in another city, and suddenly I'd get this compulsion that I had to go to the used bookstore on 38th right at that moment and there you'd be. Or coming down the elevator from working late in the darkroom, I'd just know you'd be at the bottom when the doors opened. And they'd open and you wouldn't be there. And I'd think, Silly girl. And I'd walk outside and push the button at the crosswalk. And a voice would say, Hey, and it was you, smiling. We never even kissed. But I am glad you are in the world.
Vitruvian Man: You once gave me an informal lesson in judo (which you were a teacher of) and said "It takes falling thousands of times before it feels natural." I have never forgotten those words. On our first date, we drank jasmine tea together and you told me how it was made. You lost everything you owned in a fire (except your dog) and it is only in the last few years that you have gotten to the point where you have been able to build yourself a full life again, to have your own things, to let people in, to love, and now to marry. And yet what a joy you were, what a challenge.
I Don't Want to Call You the Funny One: Although you certainly are. You wield it like a blade, but you are one of the most generous people I've ever known. You had a smile like Mario Lopez and we were friends first. You are one of the only people I'm writing this to who would actually read this post. So I want you to know, I want all good things for you. Also know that many people do not deserve your blade, and many do not deserve your generosity.
The Amoeba: In so many ways, I thought you were The One. We met on match and talked for a month or two before meeting, exchanging long emails, joking with each other about magical dive bars being like something out of the Neverending Story and talking about our dreams. When we did meet, you picked up my guitar and started singing Take on Me in my tiny house and then we went to dinner and I was completely charmed. Within a month we were going on a road trip up to Seattle for New Year's and within six months we were on our way to having our own tiny house. When we were together, you were a philosopher who didn't believe in marriage, conceiving children that would put strains on the earth's resources, and you weren't even sure that you believed in how most people conceive of love. You are now married and have a child. It was a shotgun wedding. You are one of the most important lessons I ever learned: that wanting and thinking doesn't make it so. Regardless, for a long time, you were the person I saw my life with, and I truly hope to someday be on good terms with you again. Today is not that day.
The Geologist: Our story was too perfect, so perfect that I got caught up in it myself. Boy meets girl in third grade. Boy moves away to different school. Years later, two of their closest friends are getting married and somehow they've never been reintroduced...if I hadn't met you so soon after the Philosopher, I would have known better than to get together. But you were just so good. I still feel bad for breaking your heart. I did fall for you, but when we both went away to grad school in different states and I found out you wanted to have kids by a very specific age, that you had these plans I didn't know how to fit, I knew it wasn't enough. You protested that you didn't expect me to fit them but it was too late. I was already feeling smothered by your affection and the expectations of carrying your children within a certain number of years was too much. Still, I've known few men as capable of equal relationships as you and wish so badly that you will find someone.
The Irish Poet: You were my my summer Valentine. With you I realized the depth of my scars but also that I could heal. We stayed up late in a dorm room in our Tennessee writers' workshop and read each others' poetry and I discovered the joy of loving a poet, someone whose work and mind I could respect, someone I could talk to about writing. You are a beautiful and complicated man writing brave things about hard experiences that will help other people in their pain. I am glad to have crossed paths with you even if only for a short while.
Rondeau After a Transatlantic Phone Call
Boy: I was completely twitterpated over you before it was really even possible to be so. You kissed me on the cheek in kindergarten, and I played at your house. Our mothers were friends. I remember crawling to hide with you under your bed and realizing that the skirt of my dress had come up around my waist. You said "That's OK. Friends can see friends' underwear."
The First Boyfriend: In so many ways, you were the most traditional love I ever had and yet we were so young--too young to realize how little we had in common. Now you are a rocket scientist. But at 13, all I knew was that you had beautiful red hair and made me laugh and it was one of the only times in my life that I would go in for things like teddy bears in lockers and homecoming mums and the like.
You were also the first guy I met whose life was tinged with sadness. For as straightforward and seemingly normal as you were, your father had died of AIDS only a year or so before I met you.
I'll never forget the little perfectly folded square notes you passed to me between classes or the way you made me feel seen and beautiful. The strangest part is that somehow you introduced me to my dearest friend in the world, who you dated all through college. When she first met me I was the First Love, the Ex, That Blonde Girl at the Tori Amos concert getting in the way of things between you two, but many years later it is just she and I. I'll always be grateful to you for bringing her into my life. You are happily married now in Houston with your rockets, dogs, and wife.
Green-eyed Hemophiliac: Really among firsts, you were it. The one who smashed my heart to bits. Who taught me what love was. Who had a laugh like rain falling. I met you on a church choir trip when I was 16 in between my junior and senior years of high school and every other girl had a crush on you. Somehow you fell for me too. Maybe it was my blue mascara or overwrought poetry. But we spent hours propped up together on the bus so that our limbs went numb and necks ached. When we had to go back to our homes in different cities, I listened to Sarah McLachlan's "I Love You" over and over, and "Everlong" was my soundtrack home from Dumas, Texas the day I knew I probably wouldn't see you again. Your mom once answered the phone and told me she'd gone outside to find you crying. You broke up with me because long distance was too hard and put me through hell the next summer by ignoring me all through the two-week trip. It took a few years, but in college we finally worked it out and on my 21st birthday, you came to celebrate with me and one of the best gifts I got was a conversation about our relationship and the love we'd shared. It put all my doubts to rest. You're married now in Texas and seem happy, and for that I am glad.
The Crow: My college boyfriend. You are still, somehow, the longest relationship I've been in, which sometimes distresses me, and sometimes I think says more about how long the two of us were able to let our dysfunction continue. And yet, somehow, you also in my life have treated me better than any man before or since. You just didn't have the same respect for yourself. We met late nights. Or was it early mornings? I was college friends with your roommate and you were busting tires at Firestone. I'd go out late nights with her and come home and after everyone else had gone to bed, stay up with you on the patio while you sang "Blackbird" to me or something else and played guitar. You had a beautiful voice and I could listen to you for hours. We were together in a matter of weeks and it lasted two and a half years. On Halloween, you rented a fur suit without the head and I found that endearing. You are still one of the smartest people I have ever known, capable of such kindness to me, and yet, I finally left you because I couldn't stand to be with someone who was so unhappy and unwilling to find a way to change it. I also knew as long as I stayed you wouldn't find that way. You moved to Prague to teach English and started a band. You seem happy. Sometimes I miss you desperately. There is no one I wonder about more often.
Mississippi: You were like a bowl of warm oatmeal to me on a cold dreary day. Your name was warmth and home, molasses, and rainwater. In high school, you were the tall kind of awkward guy with the great smile in the back of choir. And then one day, you were at the coffee shop when I was writing poems and you didn't seem so strange anymore. But our story was always one of missed opportunities. We were always dating other people. I realized I was in love with you when I was with someone else. And the actual time we spent together in life may have only been a couple of days.
We could have been a soap opera.Over the years, we managed always to call each other at the exact moment something significant was happening even if we'd been out of touch for months or years: a child was about to be born, a relationship was ending or we were lying to ourselves about it being good. For a long time I thought we were fated, but now I think, as the Angel Stripper says in Can't Hardly Wait (from the year I graduated): "Fate. There is fate. But it only takes you so far, because once you're there, it's up to you to make it happen."
Lorca: Someone once said to me at one of the parties we were at together that when you and I were in the same space, there seemed to be electricity between us even if we were at opposite ends, not looking or talking to each other. That we seemed that connected. You were always an enigma to me, and it's only in the last few years that I've realized I must have been a mystery to you as well. Even when we were driving back from the ranch and you said you wished you had an alphabet for my eyes right before the deer ran into the road and you swerved to miss it, I always thought I was as clear as a bell. The times we shared with the other poets at the ranch were some of the most important in my life.
I'm not sure if you know it, but I always had a sense that I was going to see you. Even if I wasn't aware that's what it was. I might even think you were in another city, and suddenly I'd get this compulsion that I had to go to the used bookstore on 38th right at that moment and there you'd be. Or coming down the elevator from working late in the darkroom, I'd just know you'd be at the bottom when the doors opened. And they'd open and you wouldn't be there. And I'd think, Silly girl. And I'd walk outside and push the button at the crosswalk. And a voice would say, Hey, and it was you, smiling. We never even kissed. But I am glad you are in the world.
Vitruvian Man: You once gave me an informal lesson in judo (which you were a teacher of) and said "It takes falling thousands of times before it feels natural." I have never forgotten those words. On our first date, we drank jasmine tea together and you told me how it was made. You lost everything you owned in a fire (except your dog) and it is only in the last few years that you have gotten to the point where you have been able to build yourself a full life again, to have your own things, to let people in, to love, and now to marry. And yet what a joy you were, what a challenge.
I Don't Want to Call You the Funny One: Although you certainly are. You wield it like a blade, but you are one of the most generous people I've ever known. You had a smile like Mario Lopez and we were friends first. You are one of the only people I'm writing this to who would actually read this post. So I want you to know, I want all good things for you. Also know that many people do not deserve your blade, and many do not deserve your generosity.
The Amoeba: In so many ways, I thought you were The One. We met on match and talked for a month or two before meeting, exchanging long emails, joking with each other about magical dive bars being like something out of the Neverending Story and talking about our dreams. When we did meet, you picked up my guitar and started singing Take on Me in my tiny house and then we went to dinner and I was completely charmed. Within a month we were going on a road trip up to Seattle for New Year's and within six months we were on our way to having our own tiny house. When we were together, you were a philosopher who didn't believe in marriage, conceiving children that would put strains on the earth's resources, and you weren't even sure that you believed in how most people conceive of love. You are now married and have a child. It was a shotgun wedding. You are one of the most important lessons I ever learned: that wanting and thinking doesn't make it so. Regardless, for a long time, you were the person I saw my life with, and I truly hope to someday be on good terms with you again. Today is not that day.
The Geologist: Our story was too perfect, so perfect that I got caught up in it myself. Boy meets girl in third grade. Boy moves away to different school. Years later, two of their closest friends are getting married and somehow they've never been reintroduced...if I hadn't met you so soon after the Philosopher, I would have known better than to get together. But you were just so good. I still feel bad for breaking your heart. I did fall for you, but when we both went away to grad school in different states and I found out you wanted to have kids by a very specific age, that you had these plans I didn't know how to fit, I knew it wasn't enough. You protested that you didn't expect me to fit them but it was too late. I was already feeling smothered by your affection and the expectations of carrying your children within a certain number of years was too much. Still, I've known few men as capable of equal relationships as you and wish so badly that you will find someone.
The Irish Poet: You were my my summer Valentine. With you I realized the depth of my scars but also that I could heal. We stayed up late in a dorm room in our Tennessee writers' workshop and read each others' poetry and I discovered the joy of loving a poet, someone whose work and mind I could respect, someone I could talk to about writing. You are a beautiful and complicated man writing brave things about hard experiences that will help other people in their pain. I am glad to have crossed paths with you even if only for a short while.
Rondeau After a Transatlantic Phone Call
by Marilyn Hacker
Love, it was good to talk to you tonight.
You lather me like summer though. I light
up, sip smoke. Insistent through walls comes
the downstairs neighbor’s double-bass. It thrums
like toothache. I will shower away the sweat,
smoke, summer, sound. Slick, soapy, dripping wet,
I scrub the sharp edge off my appetite.
I want: crisp toast, cold wine prickling my gums,
love. It was good
imagining around your voice, you, late-
awake there. (It isn’t midnight yet
here.) This last glass washes down the crumbs.
I wish that I could lie down in your arms
and, turned toward sleep there (later), say, “Goodnight,
love. It was good.”
You lather me like summer though. I light
up, sip smoke. Insistent through walls comes
the downstairs neighbor’s double-bass. It thrums
like toothache. I will shower away the sweat,
smoke, summer, sound. Slick, soapy, dripping wet,
I scrub the sharp edge off my appetite.
I want: crisp toast, cold wine prickling my gums,
love. It was good
imagining around your voice, you, late-
awake there. (It isn’t midnight yet
here.) This last glass washes down the crumbs.
I wish that I could lie down in your arms
and, turned toward sleep there (later), say, “Goodnight,
love. It was good.”