A Valentine's Day is coming haibun

Valentine's Day 1985, my lover tells me she can't stay with me, and must return to British Columbia, or else her two-year-old son will be taken away by his father and she will never see him again. We have spent the past five weeks living together in Durham, North Carolina while I finish graduate school at the University of North Carolina. We meet through a lesbian pen pal club, and meet in person for the first time in mid-January, when I pick her up from the airport. I am expecting her to bring her son, but she tells me that her husband took him away at the last minute.

One year later, I meet the love of my life a couple of days before Valentine's Day, 1986, and we start a three year relationship on our first date on Valentine's Day. She never comes out to her parents and ends up marrying her male confidante. I am invited to the wedding, and decline.


the time was then
the word was love
what was the question?*


*Based on the song "Time and a Word" by Yes (Jon Anderson/David Foster) (the album, also called "Time and a Word," was released in 1970):

"There's a time and the time is now and it's right for me,
It's right for me, and the time is now.
There's a word and the word is love and it's right for me,
It's right for me, and the word is love."




the worst thing
realizing I could
live without her


My mother dies in 1970, fortunately not on Valentine's Day. I am almost ten years old.


© Judy Kamilhor 2008

What do I see?

the damaged
and the impeccable
New York New York



the handwriting
on the fan
the shit
on the wall


washed up on my block
the carcasses
of Christmas trees


I have seen
the enemy
and it is
coleslaw


© Judy Kamilhor 2008