Of Days and Moons

Valentine’s Day. Named after a dead saint,
Famed, after lovers, living and dead, painted,
Their hearts red and their heartiness redder.
Sits in the calendar, right in between.
Between a night when I see you all day,
And a day when you are hidden all night.
You appear veiled to me tonight, half-hidden,
Making you more interesting, a hint of mystery,
To some curious observer; uneducated
In your lore of course. Not to me, not to a devoted lover.
For I know, your mysterious ways, my maiden.
My queen, of a Paradise shrouded in clouds.
My queen whose face, clouded in shrouds of darkness,
Holds more beauty than faces all out to dry,
And bears more meaning than faces all bared.
Eight suns may have come and gone
Since we had all night to us, and yet to me you are young,
In life and memory. Your thoughts are but a second old.
Dead and replaced by newer thoughts about you.
Every day since then, your veil has gotten longer,
Only to cover half your face tonight.
To most, this should be a blessing; those blessed few,
With imaginations fertile enough to fancy a face
Their mortal muses may never have.
But to me, it’s otherwise. I can never imagine
Anything to come even close to your vibrance.
You look at me from in there, your eyes twinkling, under
Eyelashes longer than your shrouds, whipping them into shape,
The hidden bridge of your nose making the seas harder to cross.
I can’t rest on the succulent buds as I’d like to,
Nor can I lay my lusty hand on the new blooms, now gloomed.
But what need are those, when the eyes say it all?
Their twinkling brightness reflected in the stars,
Speak stories of our love, back from when we first met.
I would love to claim that our love’s old, older than us.
But that would be a sheer testament to my years.
For you are forever young, a mere moon old at your oldest.
At the peak of your prime, you are now. So am I.
From here, it’s all a retreat. Into obscure fantasies for us.
Here on, your retreat will be complete, and so will mine be.
Into delirious fantasies, while I await your return.
Back again a new born, we shall meet, eight suns from now.
A newer, younger you, and an older, older me,
With more tales to share and veils to bare.
This night of the year, well nighted to let us talk,
Well nighted to not be ruined by my verbal garbage,
For memories abound when words falter,
And abound too, voiceless words, your eyes to mine.
This, we shall talk about, when you are back,
Along with other stories you bring from home.
But this night, this night, sans stories, we shall bask
In the limelight of our eyes, like celebrities do.
The night is young, like you and I.
Let us spend it getting old.
Without roses stolen from single plants,
Or balloons snatched from bawling kids,
Or hearts exposed, when better kept secret.
Let us spend it, for us, in us.
You in me, me in you, growing stronger,
Crescending half-moons and climbing peaks as one in a climax.
Wordless in eyes and blind to all else, we shall know,
That this night was an affair to remember. With dawn,
A dusk where we retreat, losing relevance,
To valentines and days, and to moons full and new.
It shall be just us, in a year of valentine days.