Valentine
Card board heart with
chocolate filling, a smaller
heart inside a larger;
comic and bounded with
scarlet sometimes paper
lace embraces it.
once there were FireMice
hosing a blazing organ,
another time Bambi and
his lady fair or maybe
it was Thumper and a
pretty bunny. Once,
I had moved and the heart
found me a month late.
another time it went
to the wrong address.
she was already sick then,
becoming forgetful.
not long after, they stopped
coming at all.
I keep old coins in one,
shells in another; once-rancid
clams from Assiniboine.
There are Kinder Toys in a third,
photos stored in a fourth, though
they don't fit all that well.
one has Shrinky-Dinks,
one has orphaned lego-men
missing hats or hands or
faces rubbed off.
Addresses on slips of paper
from long lost pen-pals,
voices I never saw.
in one I keep a locket
and a ring. the lid is lost,
the box lies open.
