Before I Met You My Joy Had Such An Early Curfew
It didn’t even bother going out. Happy Valentine’s Day!
Hello Valentines!
In honor of this very strange and pressurized Hallmark holiday, I'm going to out myself as a lover of this very strange and pressurized Hallmark holiday by sharing a new video of my love poem “Give Her” [ originally released on my album Hey Galaxy and in my book Lord of the Butterflies ]. Writing this piece brought me so much joy. I could have filled a hundred more pages listing everything I want to give my love. There is nothing in this world I enjoy doing more than writing love poems. Pouring my pink heart into life’s beige paint. Coloring the city clock-tower with the words: BEFORE I MET YOU MY JOY HAD SUCH AN EARLY CURFEW IT DIDN’T BOTHER GOING OUT.
If I were the type to wear lipstick, I’d seal every envelope with a kiss. Even if I didn’t have letters to write, I’d buy envelopes just to send my smoochy fingerprint everywhere. “You’re the reason I’m gay,” I write in Give Her, “and I mean that the old fashioned way as in happy, but also the other way, too.” It’s such a ridiculous line, but love makes room for the ridiculous. I’m a self-identified fool and don’t want to be less of a fool for love. My biggest life goal: Erase my entire to-do list and write the word “love” on every line.
Near the middle of the video you’ll hear me say, “She makes me feel like I could win the lottery with a parking ticket. I see her lipstick on a coffee cup and feel like I have never known a bruise.” It’s always rocked me to see the myriad of ways love can shift our lens on everything. And by everything, I mean every single thing. Have you ever watched a movie about the apocalypse and noticed how the folks falling in love aren’t nearly as distraught about the end of the world as everyone else? Those glorious fools won’t let their kissing be interrupted by the meteor aiming toward their heads.
As “Give Her” nears its end, I write, “When I gave you my heart, I gave my life, my word that it would not be the same heart I had given before.” Everytime we love, we hopefully do it better than the time before. The idea that we grow up instinctively knowing how to love people is a bit of a myth. Loving is a skill that often takes fine-tuning. Relationships are a classroom after all, and who hasn’t found themselves acting like a kindergartener once or twice or one million times? In one of my very first love poems from years ago I said, “I wrote you too many poems in a language I did not yet know how to speak.” By that I meant––my words were pretty, but I hadn’t yet learned how to live by them.
Thank goodness for time, and for the learning and growing that has come with it.
I wish you a day full of love, friends. Romantic or otherwise. I wish you an abundance of sweetness.
Love, Andrea Valentine ❤️
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