Happy Valentine’s Day! With chocolates, teddy bears, and roses, there’s plenty to like, but if I’m honest, Valentine’s was never a big holiday for me. Growing up, my mother and my cousin shared a Valentine’s birthday, which sounded awesome until my mother told us what it was really like. Imagine being single on Valentine’s Day and having to watch everyone else get romantic gifts on your birthday. Doesn’t sound so fun anymore, does it? So to me, February fourteenth has always been my mother’s birthday first, and romantic as an afterthought.
As if to further drive home the point, eventually I realized I’m gray-romantic. (Which is to say I rarely experience romantic feelings). Now that I’m more conscious of it, I’ve noticed that romantically inclined folks seem to have a sense for it that I don’t. People often tell me ‘anything can be a date,’ but the fact that you (romantic person) can tell when you’ve gone on a bad date with a person you still genuinely like, whilst I can’t, tells me there’s an element to romance unquantifiable yet palpable to romantic folks.
And yet, I love love stories. Not so much romcoms – I fault the writing more than the romances there – but a well written slow-burn childhood-friends-to-lovers fanfic will get me frothing at the mouth and ripping my sleep schedule to shreds just to see them kiss 200,000 words later. I live for unsaid I love you’s shown in gentle gestures and lingering glances. That little shift in the chest that comes when a character realizes their feelings go beyond platonic companionship. The italicized Oh. in the middle of a page. I cut my writing teeth on love stories, and I’m still penning them today, albeit with a lot more craft and a lot more nuance now that I’ve got a good dozen years’ experience under my belt.
So, whether you’re a no romo bro like me, or flooding the house with every rose in a mile radius, here’s hoping you get to celebrate February fourteenth the way you like best. As for me, I’m keeping up with my own tradition and sharing a couple of old works for the holiday.
Here are two gray-romantic love letters. The first, a flash fiction piece that’s seen a few name changes over the years. The second, a poem on found family, because platonic love should be celebrated today, too. Enjoy.~
The Painter
Summer is asleep. Her puffy wheaten waves of hair form her pillow, lining her cheek and tracing her nose. They scatter tiny freckle seeds across her face and along the rims of her shoulders. The last of her sunburns form pink little lakes, the waters blissfully cooled by the shade of her sheets.
Their sheets. On their bed, in their room. They live no longer as separate entities, but have become one being. Half of them fists her comforter and lets out a gentle breeze of breath, while the other feels her heart go weak at the knees.
Summer is asleep, but Winter is an insomniac, and an artist to boot. She’s dragged her rabbit-white hair into a lopsided ponytail and jammed the free strands behind her ears. Her once marble hands are patched with yellow fields and pink ponds of paint, and just under her thumb thrives a copse of lilac trees. Another warm breeze eases out of Summer’s lungs. Winter’s heart rises on the updraft.
The tail of her brush takes up blue and ices out shadows across the canvas. Summer is sleeping there as well, flatter than usual as the cold colors have only just begun to round her. Her slumber is peaceful, highlighted in sunlight while Winter brings her into a snowy embrace.
Photo by Clever Visuals on Unsplash
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