Valentine's Day, 2007

It must have been on a Tuesday that I knew you didn't want to see me anymore. We had already stopped sharing a home, but when I saw you at our usual meeting place that evening, I knew it. You had decided to be done with me. You didn't say it, or say much at all.

Later, over dinner, I finally put it on the table: You don't want to see me anymore do you? You hung your head...stammered reasons why it wasn't working for you. I was disgusted by the whole thing - all the effort I'd put in to it and what I considered a half-hearted effort on your part.

Half-hearted. That's a good one. Valentine's Day was just a few hours away when the conversation ended with me flouncing out of the restaurant. It seemed doubtful that you noticed or cared.

I celebrated your complete departure from my life by seeing a lighthearted romantic comedy starring Diane Keaton. The people onscreen gave me plenty of opportunity to cynically laugh at the stupidity of believing in love.

A few days later, sorting through things in my purse, I pulled out a small tissue-wrapped object. Opening it, I saw the clay figurine I'd intended to give to you for Valentine's Day; two people embracing. I shoved it in to a drawer and hoped to forget about it. What a cruel joke this "Valentine's Day" crap was. Not so much as a chocolate bar to honor the memories of what we had. Well, I washed my hands of all that nonsense - once and for all!

By Friday night, the opiate was leaving my system, and I needed a fix. I called and begged to talk to you...but no. Not now. Maybe...not ever.

On Saturday afternoon, I lay across my bed, crying, feeling my life ebbing away in a pool of sorrow. My friend called on me with a blood transfusion in the nick of time. "Pray to Mother Mary, or whatever female deity you can relate to, my sister. Pour your heart out to her." She comforted me with kind and loving words.

I turned to my tacky glow-in-the dark Virgin of Guadalupe. I knelt and prayed, telling her everything, and then kept her by my bed. If I awoke in the middle of the night, she was there. She, the endless source of comfort. She was better off an eternal virgin than face this pain.

The days that followed brought a kind of numb healing. Scar. Yoga eased my mind. I wrote poems and stories. I walked through the park every day. I bought a new, white, pristine, full sized bed. For me only, in my reclaimed and perpetual celibacy.

I bought candles and oils and wrote love letters.

Of course we reunited.

The pieces of broken heart were swept up from the floor. There were some in the drawer where the figurine lay, and these were put into the pile of red shards. A few had landed under the sofa, but I got them out with a long-handled duster.

So, I got my heart put back together. It's bigger now. It's really pretty.