Heart Day shines in office.

Be My Valentine.

Open my heart til it spurts love in blood like high-pressured nozzle.

Leave bruised and wounded like purple heart without guts.

Wilting flowers will stink up vase four days from now, smelling like

Mildewed skunk socks and soggy Depends

All broken—ruptured, infarcted, fibrillating holiday hearts

Stupid heart with arrow shot through it leaking deoxygenated blood

On my white coat.

Stress. Can’t get dinner reservations. Can’t meet community standards.

Can’t satisfy.

Can order big bear on internet.

Can order edible arrangements.

Oedipal arrangements arrive instead.

Bear arrives with son and mother.

Mother can’t bare stress and leaves bear behind–and son with chest pain.

Bear is big and soft.

Son is big and fat with purple heart, yelling at staff.

Quite misleading. Easy to mislead on Valentine’s Day.

Bear attacks staff.

Son attacks edible arrangements

Bear attacks doctor.

Bear sits on me with bare ass in treatment room.

Offer bear honey.

Honey calls: “Honey,” I say. “I can’t bare Valentine’s Day.”

© Richie Smith