valentine

This year for Valentine's day, I am without a valentine for the first time in four years. Admittedly, it feels a little odd to not be enacting the Valentine's tradition I shared with my ex - dinner at forbidden city, accompanied by copious amounts of wine - but I'm not yet at the point in my singledom where I feel bitter or slighted.

So, I'd like to celebrate with what is undoubtedly my most favorite piece of romantic poetry ever. In a way, this is my Valentine to myself. If I were to receive a Valentine, I would want it to say exactly this, as I have always fantasized that in some strange, far-off, magical way, this poem in in fact, for me (I do have rather tiny hands you know..)
But this is also my Valentine to you, to the entire universe, with love....

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
by E. E. Cummings
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility:whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

love always