When I used to teach on Valentine's Day, I used to do a "love/death" spectacular where I wore pink and black (pink fuzzy sweater, black lace skirt) and taught Emily Dickinson and Sappho.
Oh Eros: The Bittersweet. You broke my heart. I would read you again but I'm no longer broken.
But nobody showed up. High school boyfriends and girlfriends came from hometowns and my students spent the day with them, went into the city or slept in, were not in my class. Leftover candy.
I on the other hand, love Valentine's Day. I love love/death. I love all the deep reds and tulips and balloons, richness in the white month.
It's been hard to get work done because there's so much work to get done. And the work to do is teaching, and finding a job, and grading, and copying, what my elementary school teachers used to call busy work. It keeps me busy.
But I have ideas for essays, those elusive creatures, fast silver fish I would like to catch, and publish, and hear on the radio, spinning on the dial.
Today: fat snowflakes, wet black streets. Cars parked on the railroad track again so I trudge over them, over the footprints of someone who came before me, someone I probably know. There are so few of us who walk this way.
