In an effort to unbreak the site (feel free to pretend that you’re Toni Braxton now), I have combined all our Valentines into one post.

I wrote to you to ask you to forgive me, but you never wrote back. I wrote to you again, and you still haven’t written back. I’m sure it’s not me. If you’d gotten the letters, you’d have forgiven me. You’d have to. You still love me. Instead, you’ve probably been kidnapped or killed. Maybe you had an evil clone that’s getting your mail instead of you. I’ve heard those clones can be a real pain in the ass. Still, if you ever find a box of old letters on your doorstep, I want you know that I wrote to you. Lots. I hope the planet you’re on hasn’t blown up.

When are you coming back
to get your stuff?
I packed it all in a plastic bag.
Actually, there’s five of them,
and you can take them all.
I don’t want them anyway!
Though, if you would be so kind,
leave the one with my heart.

A Top Five List.
by Marissa Landragin
His

1. As a Christmas present, you took me for one night to a rustic cabin at Elkhorn Hot Springs (which has since been shut down for fire code violations). We soaked in the outdoor pool and used the indoor sauna made of slick wood; we played trivial pursuit in our cabin which was sagging under the weight of so much snow. The wood stove kept filling the room up with smoke. We made mac and cheese and vegetarian hot dogs. You were sick in the middle of the cold night; we still don’t know if it was the smoke or the hot dogs but you haven’t eaten them since.

1. You came to Montana to see me for spring break, when we were still new. I had been in school there for two months; I had been waiting to see you stand by the mountains. We walked to the Co-op in the snowy streets to buy premade take-out. In my dorm room we spread the comforter on the tile floor and watched “Wonder Boys” while we ate broccoli cheddar soup and couscous salad, then made love there on the floor.

1. I had only been to Lava Lake in the winter, when it was an ice sheet I could walk right onto, so I took you back in the summer. We hiked through a meadow and over a wooden bridge where we felt the spray. When we got there, I raced ahead with the camera, to take a picture of your face the first time you saw it. But I was awestruck and forgot. We sat for hours on the rock and wet our feet; when I saw a chipmunk, I turned too quickly and dropped my lens cap into the rocks, so a part of that day remains.

1. See #3, hers.

1. You were taking a nap when I asked if I could join you. You said my eyes looked like sunflowers and it gave me the courage to kiss you, for the first time.

Hers

1. I drove from NH to NY to see you on New Year’s Eve, the first one we would spend together, in the middle of a year during which we barely saw each other at all. I was dressed up for you and you took me to the Autumn Cafe where we shared carrot ginger soup and enchiladas. Full of cooks with dreadlocks and patched pants, I felt so warm and at home.

1. See #2, his.

1. We had weeks of winter break together and spent it all in upstate NY, finally ending up in Ithaca, in my third floor apartment. We went to Moosewood, and you were embarrassed because I buttoned one you missed in your fly in public. After we saw “A Very Long Engagement” with subtitles, at the independent movie theatre, we walked home. There was snow on the ground and it started snowing again, and the Christmas lights were still up all over town.

1. In the middle of a sticky July, when we lived together in Montana even though it had been less than a year, you came home from chemistry lab and pulled me out the door and drove me around Ted Turner’s ranch to the crumbling wooden building we call the shack. And we just stood beneath it, pretending it could be our house, and saw the buffalo in the distance.

1. We had been lying on my bed for hours and you said “I don’t know what to do. Because I like you but I’m leaving. And I don’t know whether I should kiss you or run out that door.” But then you did kiss me, for the very first time.

A Drawing.
by Morgan

Click the link.

A Drawing.
by DJ Happy Heather

Click on the link.

A Story.
by Mary Lewys

A little stone angel stands in the grass. The name carved into the base is covered due to the wet winter and lack of local lawn care. That’s all right. Her name is like a secret this way, only she and I know.I place a Valentine’s Day card on the feet of the angel. It’s the kind kids pass to each other. Why should she not have one just because she’s here? Sitting in the grass, I sigh and swallow the lump. I manage to talk and not cry this time, telling her things of importance and how much I miss her. My mouth runs dry. My tears will not fall. I cover my mouth to keep my burden.Touching the angel’s head, I say her name out loud. It’s an echo and a prayer for forgiveness that never comes.