Will you be my Valentine?  Next
year of course.  When the red and
white polka dots star out the
night and I am confounded
with your beauty.  

Why haven't I written, you ask?
I have dumped my life's colors
onto pages
and into notebooks for you.
I am a woman of many words.
I describe events in the shells and fossils along the beach we walked when we loved each other.

I am engraved by the events
of your stone hard meanings.
I wrap your adjectives in the
filo dough which lines me and
through which my delicate
remembrances filter.

You are the spoon with which I am measured.  Myself into your coffee and cream, you into my death defying
dare to life.


Caroline Shank