My dear love, Happy Valentine's Day. I never was so much one for that holiday, but thinking of you -- well, I just smile & imagine that we might have a tender, romantic moment -- and I know that you wouldn't dream of getting away with buying a bouquet of tawdry, color-clashing supermarket flowers. Ah, sweetheart, it's okay, I'm not so fussy -- I just prefer the simple sublime gesture, to the "OMG I forgot the anniversary" obligation.

Ah, sweetheart, in simple sublime gestures... I'd have the lights turned down low

-- oh I'm sorry, I just can't bear to go there all the way tonight, not here -- oh darling

I've taken that Heart Shaped Like a Baguette and chopped it up (don't read into that) to make croutons, which I spread on a cookie sheet, tossed with minced garlic & EVOO, and am baking in the oven now. Wonderful garlicky aroma wafting up the stairs.

Sweetheart, oh my dear... I am clasping your hands now. I wish we could connect. I know it won't happen... and I wish it would... I'm taking other steps, because I simply cannot be alone forevermore. And by saying that I don't mean to be melodramatic at all. You know how it's been for me. I am reaching out there, and - well, we'll see. I get the feeling that an awful lot of people, of both sexes, of roughly our ages, are in just the situations we find ourselves in.

And by this I mean very kind, well-meaning people

I don't mean "players" who determined they "wanted it all"
and set about it methodically & cavalierly
organizing their lives in such a fashion
marauding about over the years
whatever the infinite and incalculable costs to others

(that poor woman, buried except for trysts with "emotionally unavailable" him
just a horrifying situation, in my view
I could go on -- parse some more -- but I won't)

(yes, but I will - for just a bit -
honestly - prostitutes get paid at least
so if you want to be "emotionally unavailable"
but date other women -- have drinks with them, laugh it up, etc.
oh that is really ugly)

without being "moralistic" there are indeed moral gradations to be made & found
I am finding, one by one, out there somewhere, an awful lot (well, several, here & there scattered throughout the region) of lonely, seemingly very kind, really okay souls

I am thinking about all this stuff, and the gradations, because I'm plunging myself into the waves
and I have to think about such calculations, and my own limits, and how others might press

I wish so much that I could just be with you --
and I can sense that on some level you feel the same way
but we have to let each other go -- you know it, I know it
you're not available
and I just have to go -- well just somewhere, to someone kind & genuine I hope
who may not be "the one"
it's going to be another journey
but it's okay

you know? I'm up for it
that "guy who used to live across the street from me"
perhaps he's a silent muse for me in that regard
he's been through it and then some

we're genuine, and we're true

we're all of us -- at age 52-53-54, thereabouts --
if not in literal menopause as I am
(utterly asymptomatic for me, other than cessation of periods - do I miss them? no)
then men my age are in the midst of huge lifechange too, I sense it
and I've been through a big transformation myself
all of us
you, darling, & me
and others I haven't met yet
emerging from deep underwater
up into the waves