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  • After Valentine’s Day
  • Mairéad Byrne (bio)

Gloves sprout on grass, on sidewalk, like sudden marrows after rain, they’re shocked and shocking, make a sculpture park of lawn and pavement— bulbous surprise of upright mitt, spreadeagled grief of child’s knit cast-off. On State Street, a furled red leather finger beckons—I rush to pluck it, shake—there might be money.

Now the mauve snow retreats, I tread on margins, seek the yield of mud and color up my boots. I feel that doctor’s diagnosis in my joints, and thumb the dusty snaps of what just happened: dour, unsatisfactory comments of the day. Strangers move toward me as if to say hello. They carry their faces like cups, which tilt, at the instant of passing, spill out such radiant smiles!

My door is bolted and the chain across. Then Richard comes a-knocking with his fist bunched thick with poetry. We talk it up and down and through; small alleluias drizzle in my kitchen till Vreni whistles— the pasta’s done, and he creeps backwards homewards, trailing tomorrows in his wake. [End Page 658]

My neighbors come with eight long-stemmed red roses standing like children in their arms. I take what’s given, wait at the open door to watch their upward progress on the stair, then turn to rearrange the room about their gift, resume my interrupted work. While from the table, a slant look lets me catch the nervous arch of roses, shaking their passionate heads.

Mairéad Byrne

Mairéad Byrne has published poems in Folio, Cimarron Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Seneca Review. Her two plays, The Golden Hair and Safe Home, were produced in Dublin in 1982 and 1985. She has worked as a journalist in the United States and Ireland.

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