Blue Valentines
I feel as though my penchant for writing began just prior to Valentine’s Day. It was a day over a decade ago that I experienced love lost. Or so I thought it was—love, that is, because it was definitely lost.
How would you react to someone expressing to you that they would like to see other people? Which translates roughly to, “I am actively pursuing the exclusive company of another individual and don’t want to be with you any more.” If you’re like me, then you would internalize every word that person said, convert it to bitterness, attribute it to this particular mid-February holiday and never trust a word whispered in your ear ever again…
…until…
…words slowly drip once more like honey and you would be remiss not to listen to them. So you do, and they’re so sweet, so succulent, so believable. So you believe them. And they’re true when they’re spoken silently with soft lips pressed against yours.
But when her mouth pulled away, so did she. And so did I.
I may have lost a Valentine, but I learned to poignantly pour my heart out on paper. And I’m left to wonder which was the better outcome.
Maybe Tom Waits knows.
she sends me blue valentines
all the way from Philadelphia
to mark the anniversary
of someone that I used to be
and it feels just like there’s
a warrant out for my arrest
baby you got me checkin’ in my rearview mirror
and it’s why I’m always on the run
that’s why I change my name
and I didn’t think you’d ever find me here
to send me blue valentines
like half forgotten dreams
like a pebble in my shoe
as I walk these streets
and the ghost of your memory
is the thistle in the kiss
and the burglar that that can break a rose’s neck
it’s the tattooed broken promise
that I hide beneath my sleeve
and I see you every time I turn my back
she sends me blue valentines
though I try to remain at large
they’re insisting that our love
must have a eulogy
why do I save all of this madness
here in the nightstand drawer
there to haunt upon my shoulders
baby I know
I’d be luckier to walk around everywhere I go
with a blind and broken heart
that sleeps beneath my lapel
instead she sends me blue valentines
to remind me of my cardinal sin
I can never wash the guilt
or get these bloodstains off my hands
and it takes a whole lot of whiskey
to make these nightmares go away
and I cut my bleedin’ heart out every night
and I’m gonna die a little more
on each saint valentine’s day
don’t you remember that I promised I would
write you… these blue valentines
blue valentines
blue valentines
Blue Valentines
By Tom Waits
Posted in thoughts/life, love
March 31st, 2008 at 9:56 am
I stand paralyzed, hesitant feet, eyes searching both directions. Slowly, timelessly, hoping for a sign. Feet familiarly and seemingly frozen in time, and the heart shielded in a blanket of snow. Cold, wet, new. Not knowing, not seeing, not believing. I need to understand. I need to feel, but it has become a painful and endless mist of rain. Oh, refreshing, cold rain. Why must you come visit me today? Why can I not welcome you today? For today, you see I cannot find my own way here. Today, today I must ask my God to carry me. Tomorrow, tomorrow I will try again. I will lift my feet. I will.
I’m left to wonder…which is the better outcome? Does it help? I think maybe so.
April 17th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
For someone to express that they want to see other people is so hard to understand or even know how/what to feel towards it. Do we really ever make peace with this? Especially when you spend so many years with one person. I’ve heard once that it takes twice as long to get over a relationship as the length of time it lasted. This must be crazy, but then again, I get it.
Years learning so much about that person. Understanding and believing in a person, in yourself. Learning what it means to trust, how to trust, and give unselfishly to the one you love.
Maybe I am just old-fashioned, or too idealistic, but what is the point of working (yes-relationships are work), and growing to become stronger in a relationship with another person if the result is to walk away?
Yes, life is a life-long journey of learning, of growing, and becoming our better selves, but I don’t know if I will ever understand giving up on love. I personally don’t want to know this. I don’t believe in being with multiple people. Our bodies, our emotions, feelings, even our spirituality…they are all too perfectly connected. Yes, I’ve been there, done that. For the person I have become, it is against everything I know and feel. For without love, there is nothing.
The beautiful thing…it took knowing love, being loved, believing in love, and learning how to love, that moved me to this importantly strengthening place of loving me too.
God, thank you.