My Invisible Valentine

Facts off CNN, February 14

84% of Americans say they're in love this morning. 16% say they're not. No undecideds, unlike every other poll. People are evenly divided over whether Valentine's Day matters, though one reporter said she felt sorry for all those who have nobody to be their valentine. Even if it's true that only 4% say the day is bad, and only 1% actually dread the date, making it more popular than Thanksgiving or Christmas. The reporter added that over 60% of women say they would give up sex for a year for a date with Brad Pitt. But men will never give up sex, period. No one dares ask them to.

But there was one man who said it's possible to make love even when you never make love. He said it's possible to carry someone in your mind, your heart, to feel her skin across miles and years, to hear her voice when the birds stir in the trees or the dishes clatter in the sink. To taste her mouth every time you talk, closing your own mouth into a soft kiss when you say your m's and b's, or harder kiss of your p's, every time you lick an l or nibble on an f, or a v, every time you are lost and open in a w or an o . . .

Okay, I admit it. No one said this. No one ever does. But I am thinking of him. The man who was not on CNN. The man who is not here but is somewhere far away thinking of me thinking of him thinking of me. The man who makes me one of the 84% to be envied instead of the 16% to be pitied, or instead of the woman I really am. A man can do that to a woman. He can change her into other things. Even now he is tracing my skin with his lips. He is writing my name with his tongue. When I wrap my legs around his hips, he lifts me up and up until we drift across the sky, leaving a trail of sparks in our wake. Sometimes we spin on the currents and eddies of airs like Frisbees. And he tells me the secret of secrets. His secrets are for me. Only me, or the woman who would never give up sex for a single date with Brad Pitt. Who will never betray her invisible man.