Next Year   (Written 2.14.2024)

I've always wanted a valentine, but this year more so than ever.

I feel too tight and twisted, like a tether.

I keep telling myself that next year I'll have one. That my valentine will make me laugh and have fun. 

I won't be single, I say. I'll have courage and be able to mingle.

All the boys'll want me. They'll bow before me at the knee. They'll beg me to date. And then I smile and say, "Okay. Maybe we are bound together by fate."

I tell my foolish, lovestruck brain this, but do I really believe? There's no way I can be sure of the future; I can't perceive. Wish I could, but no. That's just the way it'll go. Though I wish so badly it wasn't so.

                                                       -Anna Devine

                      -Dedicated to those who didn't have a valentine this year. (2024)