Hagiography

I kept finding myself entranced. I heard her singing once
but she was embarrassed at my eagerness and never sang again.
She would walk past me and delicately place her hand above my hip
so that her fingernail grazed against my floating rib
while I inhaled her hair and smelled nothing
as she walked by and finished the ordeal of the day.
She would look at me and my tongue turned to ash.
She would look at me until I remembered the hunger of a starving man,
and then she would still look at me but when she smiled she meant it.

I bought a white orchid and a box of chocolates
with a vaguely European name emblazoned on the front.
I took brown card-stock paper and with my black pen I wrote

“In Saint Valentine we find the curious case of a man and legacy remembered by a world that never knew his voice and may not have ever known his face. Even now men confuse him with his precursors or descendants, thinking that he died pierced with arrows and many sorrows, or for romantic cause. But can they be blamed for this? Valentinus of Rome has never been well attested. We find in his holiday the ideas and repetitions of Lupercalia, that much is true. But we also see throughout time that in each of the stolen, timeworn, pagan festivals there was an aspect of a god who came among us, who separated from our lives earthly toil and worry. We never find specifics of the life of Valentinus, his death, or even why he should be a saint. And yet he is a saint. If humanity can venerate someone for centuries without mentioning why, I hope you like your chocolates.”

I folded the paper and felt its thickness give way under my fingertips.
I wrote her name on the outside and put the card on top of the box.

I thought about it for a little while and decided
that her man would probably not appreciate my daydreams.
I doubted that she would appreciate them, either,
so I took the card off of the chocolates
and let the labors of foreign chocolatiers melt into my tongue
piece by piece

with punctuation marks of whiskey
drowning out the sunset.

I did not know what to do with the card,
but I burned the orchid as soon as I felt drunk enough to make a flame.