Love and Taxes

My husband and I have always had a relatively pragmatic view of Valentine's Day. After twelve years together valentines are more like notes we pass to each other in the halls of an ordinary day than that one beaming roman candle that you light on a Valentine's Day early in your relationship and silently hope doesn't explode in your hands.

This year, we celebrated all things red and pink by having our taxes done. Oddly, it seemed a perfect way to honor our married 2009. No year is really over until the fat, Federal lady has sung, so we celebrated a New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day hybrid while sitting in our accountant's cubicle at H&R Block.

Fifteen minutes into itemizing it was apparent that 2009's pursuits had already begun to melt into memory. When my husband pulled out the L.A. back-up documentation folder I felt a strange, sorry sensation, as if I'd forgotten the lines of my favorite poem. There it was: the evidence of all we'd tried to do -- his rental car and hotel receipts, plane tickets, and credit card bills from the western sojourn to see what else was out there. In another folder was my own paper trail of first year tuition tax forms and textbook sales slips. Added together, could our paper pile amount to something more tangible than the year itself?

I watched our accountant tally up the deductions thinking that in its own way, each w-2, 9, form C, 1040-E and 1098 was like a kind of valentine we were sending to each other. They were more than just statements of account or interest paid, they were small proofs-of-purchase from the down payment we had made on our dreams. As each form was stapled into our 2009 tax portfolio I imagined them dusted with tiny mylar cupids and adorned with lipstick kisses. I pictured signing on the dotted lines with a neon pink pen, replacing each "i" in my name with a totem pole of bubble hearts.

I was thinking,

'Valentine in black and white.
A solid, stapled
paper replacement
for time and trial.
And yet, and yet,
it warms
when I hold it
thinking of you.'

I was dreaming of before and after, of everything we did and want to do. That's pretty good for two gray chairs in a gray room, on a gray day in February. Pretty good, pragmatic valentine.