That Day in February

by Brett Rutherford

Pink cards arrived
with little hearts
and arrows.

Tomorrow
the senders come
to claim their victory.
peer over the edge
of an operating
theater, as I
am dissected
by tiny, long,
feather-fledged
scalpels.

Pink cards arrive
like individual hornets.
The hive follows,
an angry cloud
in which I sink,
a million stings
of insincere
affection.

I run. They fall
like meteors,
my fast feet trailed
by flaming craters.
Some cave
I crave
until the mail truck
is out of sight.

Unsent, the letter
I most require,
and dead its sender.
Unsent, another
from one who has quite
forgotten me.