My Valentine

I loved you more than life until I didn’t anymore.

It stopped, snuffed out and dissipated like the smoke you used to blow in the air in your endless and endlessly annoying attempts at blowing smoke rings.

I loved the smell of pipe tobacco and rye whiskey until I didn’t anymore.

Now it is taking a thousand washes to get the smell out of my sheets and the pillows will have to be thrown out.

I loved the way you used to quote Shakespeare and ‘Seinfeld’ with equal amounts of irony and delight until I didn’t anymore.

These days my eye twitches in ire at the sound of the bard and I change the channel when that show comes on.

I loved the way your hand would hold mine, tightly and without entwining our fingers until I didn’t anymore.

Though my hands still flex involuntarily whenever I think of you, lonely though the rest of me is not.

I do not miss you (not much, anyway). I do not want to see you (except from a distance, maybe). I do not love you (I do not, I do not).

Not anymore.