Valentine - Owen Sheers

The water torture of your heels

emptying before me down that Paris street,

evacuated as the channels of our hearts.

That will be one memory.

The swing of the tassels on your skirt

each step filling out the curve of your hip;

your wet lashes, the loss of everything we’d learnt.

That will be another.

Then later – holding each other on the hotel bed

like a pair of wrecked voyagers

who had thought themselves done for,

only to wake washed up on the shore

uncertain in their exhaustion

whether to laugh or weep.

That my valentine, will be the one I’ll keep.  

Owen Sheers. Skirrid Hill, 2005.