The Day After Valentine's by Faith Shearin

Love is cheaper now: fifty cent stuffed animals,
deflated balloons that declare I love you

but not that much. Chocolates melting
in their thin plastic hearts. Holidays are

arbitrary pressure, aisles of red light.
I am sad the day after anything

but expired love is worse than
old Halloween or faded Easter. The bins

of passed over kittens and hollow
chocolate flowers like stubs from a movie

I saw with a boy who forgot my name.
The one who told jokes that weren't funny,

the one who was handsome but dumb. All that
old love on sale: less valuable but never free.


- Faith Shearin from Moving the Piano. Stephen F. Austin University Press © 2011.