With today's peaceful poem filled with faith and hope, "Biorhythmic Resistance" by Jill Crainshaw, Writing In A Woman's Voice will take a sabbatical until March 26. (This includes a previously mentioned full moon celebration project, which will be postponed until April's full moon.)

Biorhythmic Resistance

by Jill Crainshaw

The waxwings visited today. They
know when at winter’s spring-ward edge

to harvest our backyard cedar’s frosted
blue berries. Sometimes the luck of

wildness calls my eyes skyward, and
I see them, masked urban foragers

warming naked Jack Frost trees with
ephemeral browned-butter flames.

And then they are gone. They brush
still-cold blue skies with tails dipped in

sunflower yellow, leaving no sign 
they were ever here at all. But as I

watch them fly away, an ancient promise
caresses my face. When an uninvited

stranger occupies our terrace, holds minds
hostage to chaotic rhythms, desperate

to rewire fragile dreams to his own 
narcissistic gravity, this is how we

resist. We synchronize our wings to
creation’s pace and breathe in and out

the spiraling balm of hope. And then we
live as people who remember, who

know in the marrow of our bones:
the waxwings will visit again.

* * * * *

Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She enjoys exploring how words give voice to unexpected ideas, insights and visions.

Half of a Heart                                                                                               

by Emma Hines

For a tattoo artist, she didn’t have very many tattoos. Only one on the inside of her left wrist; the black outline of one half of a heart. They always asked where the other half was.

She loved it when they did that.

“You have the most beautiful green eyes,” a man crooned. She knew a pickup line when she heard one, and leaned towards him so he could better see the neckline of her dress; a little black thing she enjoyed wearing because it made her feel like she could kill someone. She liked his eyes, too; deep blue that would go nicely with hair that was dark, like hers.

“Why thank you,” she said.

This one will do nicely.

She invited him to sit with her, and pretended not to notice as he obviously looked her over. She knew she was beautiful, but it was a surreal beauty, a beauty that made people look twice because it was so unbelievable the eyes had to see it again to make sure it was standing before them in the form of a woman with eyes greener than the earth. At first it had annoyed her, but she’d found a way to make putting up with the catcalls worth her while. Honestly, it was hard to blame the ones that oogled, and she’d long since stopped minding when people stared because it made her hobby so much easier. She’d started frequenting bars and nightclubs because that was where all the pretty people went.

I can always be more beautiful.

“You know, I normally don’t like tattoos,” the man said, his eyes stopping at her wrist, “but for you I’ll make an exception.” She smiled at him flirtatiously, fluttering her dark lashes and letting her hair fall over one shoulder, glancing away to look just the right amount of mysterious and sultry.

Thank goodness I decided on long, thick hair.

"Who has the other half of the heart?" the man pressed, not very subtly asking if she was single. She pretended to remember a long-ago heartbreak and made her voice husky when she replied,

"Someone who abandoned me, a long time ago."

"I wouldn't abandon you," the man promised.

A few drinks later, she was ready to make sure he wouldn’t. Alcohol didn’t affect her like it did the rest of them, so she had to work her voice into a bubbly, overexcited pitch when she squealed,

“Wanna go to my place?” Of course, the man nodded; they always did. She hated taxis but she’d already pretended she was drunk so she was forced to call one and sit in the back and pretend she liked the man’s sloppy kisses.

No wonder I didn’t have to fight anyone to get this man.

She never liked having to steal someone away from another person; it was just such a pain, but she’d done it a couple times, for the right hair or smile. Stealing took a few days, and she preferred a one-night job where she got what she wanted with little to no effort at all. When she dragged him out of the taxi, she was glad she’d convinced him to leave before he’d had another drink. He was heavy and she couldn’t carry him without damaging her nails.

Her house was her tattoo shop, and the man stumbled inside to collapse on a chair. His eyes never wandered to the strange books on her shelves, or the candles all around, and he didn’t bother to glance down at the rug with a pentagram on it that was centered right underneath his chair. All he looked at was her, and when she came near, tugged her onto his lap.

“Wait, wait,” she told him breathlessly. “Before... I just... I need to know you won’t abandon me.” She held his gaze, those beautiful blue eyes, and watched her beauty work on him. The three shots of vodka in his system worked, too.

“Anything,” he swore.

“A tattoo,” she said, blurting it like she’d just come up with the idea spontaneously. “The other half of my heart.” The man hesitated and looked away, but she let one of the straps of her dress slide down, and that was all it took to convince him.

She’d already prepared the needle, and in no time the man was staring at his right wrist, testing how the ink looked when he twisted his hand. The man was starting to feel faint, she could tell.

Perfect.

She put their arms together and lined the tattoos up to make a complete heart, then traced around it with her finger, and visualized what she wanted from him.

Beautiful blue eyes.

The man started to scream, but that was why she’d set up her shop in the middle of nowhere. She timed it, and the thrashing lasted about twelve seconds.

Then the man was dead in her chair, and his eyes were gone.

She felt a pop, and she blinked as the world was gone for a brutal second before coming back in neat clarity.

She put the body where she kept the others, then checked herself in the mirror.

They do go nicely with my hair.

The next night, a man stopped her on her way to a new bar.

            “You have the most beautiful blue eyes,” he said. She smiled at him, and he grinned back. His teeth were whiter and straighter than hers, pearly and beautiful. How would they look framed by her red lips?

            “Why thank you,” she said.

* * * * *

Emma Hines is a 17- year-old junior in high school, planning on pursuing a university degree that will support her goal of becoming a professional writer. 

Donation

by Sarah Henry

I would like to donate

my body to science

with a flourish.

My long-awaited dissection

must be written off

to good will.

A medical student soon

learns that organs in a cadaver

don’t mirror each other

like two halves of a French

door opening in the salon

of a wealthy art collector.

Let me invite you inside

with pleasure, and hope

you won’t send regrets.

He who hesitates is lost.

Anatomy class is tough,

but not so bad as reading

pediatric electrocardiograms

with their many dark 

and murmuring hearts.

My driver’s license says,

An eye for an eye.

When my car collides with

a distracted station wagon,

a student will butterfly

my body, taking everything,

the uneven and misaligned,

all askew. His scalpel will

rob my grave.

* * * * *

Sarah Henry is a former student of Robert Hass and Louise Gluck at the University of Virginia. Today she lives near Pittsburgh, where her poems have appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. and the Pittsburgh Poetry Review. Farther afield, Sarah's work has been published in the International Women's Day issue of the Camel Saloon, The Hollins Critic and six anthologies. CHEAP POP featured her humorous prose. Humor is very important to her.

Creative Writing

by Sarah Henry

He said his grandfather

was personal secretary

to Pierre DuPont, even

though Pierre DuPont must

have had many hangers-on.

(His parents didn’t own

a brag gallery in their

den to prove it.)

He worked it in that

he was president of Student

Council in high school.

(A former classmate said

he had only been treasurer

of the Ski Club.)

By his own report,

his college girlfriend

hadn’t been as “rich”

as he was. (Was he rich?)

He broadcasted a completely

false and unsubstantiated

rumor about my making

a bodice-ripping attempt

to seduce him. (Look!

All of his women come running!)

Finally, he trailed over to Russia,

where he published a fish story,

a whopper, a whale of a tale.

Yes, this is about you.

* * * * *

Sarah Henry is a former student of Robert Hass and Louise Gluck at the University of Virginia. Today she lives near Pittsburgh, where her poems have appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. and the Pittsburgh Poetry Review. Farther afield, Sarah's work has been published in the International Women's Day issue of the Camel Saloon, The Hollins Critic and six anthologies. CHEAP POP featured her humorous prose. Humor is very important to her.

40 YEARS WITH AN ELECTRICAL ENGINEER

by Brenda Havens

            Lou Mitchell’s was bustling, damn it.

            The hostess settled me at the counter, a bit away from the bustle.  I was here for fuel, not fellowship.  All these perky tourist families were quite annoying.

            I left a seat between myself and the next guy. 

Oh, he’s reading a book!  And I’m reading my Russell Banks!  We have something in common!  I wonder if he’s an English teacher. We could have a conversation about books.  I’d love that.  An affair would be nice.  Wow, how’d I transition to that idea so fast?  I wonder, too, if that skillet thing he ate was good.  Oh, well, I’ll just read.  It’s The Darling.  I’m pretty into it. Main character was in the Weatherman Underground, so I’m learning about that from the inside out, if Banks knows what he’s talking about. 

Oh, darn.  He’s packing his book away, so it’s too late to talk about it. He—taller than I thought-- strolled on out of the restaurant.

Oh, well.  I’ve got my book.

            I had the day in Chicago before my husband got off work. We would spend the night in the condo borrowed from Cousin Judy, and then head back home to Indiana in the morning.

             This time, he would be armed with Viagra, tested, discussed and blessed by his pecker-checker.  I felt anxious, but looked forward to the intimacy, the closeness of being touched and held during, before and after lovemaking.  A big, boundless orgasm wouldn’t hurt, either. 

However.  In the car on the way to our Steppenwolf matinee, I noticed his breath.  Again.  The halitosis he gets when he doesn’t use the hydra floss for a week.

Bastard.

           

           After the play, where I spent some mental energy hoping the guy next to me couldn’t smell my husband’s breath, we went to dinner at Marcello’s on North Avenue.  We chatted about the play, recalled some good times living in Evanston. I did have to ask him to smooth the duck fuzz at the top of his head, but I couldn’t smell his breath.

We called our sons, who were in the middle of the traditional Chicago May 1 move from one apartment to another. They agreed that some pizza & pasta would be helpful, so we ordered, and when finished eating, set the GPS for their new address:  24-something Leavitt, and drove over. Fun to see them and their new place.

“Sorry. I was defecating,” he shared, buckling back in. Oh.  Great.  My mind raced ahead of his next words.  Yes, it was true.  A bad bout of diarrhea.  Heeewww. 

That did it for me.  But what about him?  Hopefully, he feels too sick to think about sex.

            After his shower (so glad he realized the need), as I poured myself a bit of Cousin Judy’s white wine, my peripheral vision caught him in view through the just-opened bathroom door.  My ears caught the crinkle of plastic and foil in his hands, his voice, “Well, are we ready to try it?” 

Unbelieving, I looked at him, damp, hairy, gray chest hanging over wrapped towel.  I thought fast--decided to bring up the breath, since the bowels didn’t discourage him.  And, truly, how can we have decent foreplay with halitosis as a guest?  

We talked. Defensive at first, he agreed he had been thoughtless to focus so much on those projects that he ignored basic hygiene, and, no, he wouldn’t want to kiss me if I had monster breath.

He lay his head back and dozed on to sleep. I walked out to the balcony, taking in East Loop lights, like thousands of stars twinkling eternity, and hope, light and love. I sighed in tandem with a waning siren rushing south on Lake Shore. On a rooftop to the north, I saw partiers, young, buoyant. Awake.

I sighed again, then turned back inward. Oh, well, I’ve got my book.

Ancestors

by Ann Cooper

She glided through her life

looking like a centaur in drag,

bustle out behind, and one could only guess

how many legs and feet below,

keys at her waist,

wearing muslins, silks, sprigged calicos.

She stayed at home and learned to draw,

to sing, to sew, speak French,

bring calves’ foot jelly to the deserving poor.

Told to hide her body,

except for her white hands and face…and breasts,

exhibiting promise but knowing little of what that was.

She did not raise her children

or know her husband very well.

Did she ever say, “Look at me, at who I am?

“More than decoration,

more than symbol of family and wealth,

more than a breeder of a future without change?”

Did she long to be treated well,

at least as well

as favorite dog or horse?

Was this my ancestor?

Not likely, though perhaps

my mother’s and my aunt’s.

Mine lived in a shtetl

and worked with her family on farm, in shop,

gender disguised by wig and dress,

work discounted by mikva mentality

that made her at monthly intervals

unclean to even touch

yet still acceptable enough to toil and clean and cook and serve,

hearing every day the prayer of men

thanking God they were not like her.

A breeder of a future without change.

Who had time for rage and bitterness?

And to what avail,

since this was what God decreed, they said.

——

How have I emerged from these strait worlds,

a funnel of their impotence and rage,

yet hearing still the echoes of those myths of women’s place,

to find a way unwalled, uncharted,

still not peril-free,

but freer than the garden mazes of cultivated plants,

cut and pruned and tortured into shapes

plants were not meant to have…

or women either?

* * * * *

Ann Cooper has been writing poems on and off for more than thirty years. She discovered he woman's voice very early, as a little girl, as she observed the many ways that women were treated differently from men—by both women and men: lowered expectations and narrowed horizons, for example, along with all the rest.

THE THINGS INSIDE US

by Fred Skolnik

Pamela Smith woke up early. She generally didn't look at herself in the mirror in the morning but when she did she didn't like what she saw. She had never been attractive and now she was haggard. That hadn't mattered in the first flush of conjugal bliss and shouldn't have mattered now when she was middle aged and no one looked at her that way anymore, but nonetheless it depressed her somewhat. Her husband was still asleep, a lump. She brushed her teeth and washed her face and stared at the bottle of sleeping pills in the medicine cabinet with many wordless thoughts flashing through her mind. Then she went downstairs and had her coffee. She felt listless, out of sorts. After a while her husband came down, already dressed. He kissed her cheek and had his coffee too and after looking at the paper dragged his golf clubs out of the hall closet and said, "I'm gonna run."

   "Have a good time," Pamela said.

   "I always do."

   "Will you be back for lunch?"

   "I always am."

   He smiled. This was his sense of humor. After the late lunch he would watch the football game and Pamela would do some housework. She heard the car start up and looked out the window and saw him turning into the street and didn't know if she was glad or not to have the house to herself for a while. She went back upstairs and thought about getting dressed but decided not to because there was no point in getting dressed if she wasn't going out and it was Sunday after all and no one was expected. She made the bed and straightened out the bedroom. Then she went into the bathroom again and cleaned the sink and toilet. Downstairs the house was fairly dark so she opened all the curtains and a few windows as well and glanced at the lawn. Soon the first winter weeds would be coming up, their seeds buried in the ground all summer long. She glanced at the newspaper too. Nothing there interested her. As time went on she was becoming less and less interested in things and didn't have anything like golf or football to keep her occupied. She was becoming less and less interested in the children too now that they were grown. At first she had tried to control their lives but soon enough she had realized that there was no point to it and they would have to make their own mistakes and find their own way and she wasn't going to get too excited about their ups and downs. Not having the burden of her children's lives weighing down on her had been a great relief and she liked to say that not worrying about them anymore had added ten years to her life. They of course worried about her but she insisted that she was just fine and enjoying life like anyone else her age.

   Pamela wasn't hungry. She didn't have much of an appetite these days. She looked through some magazines and turned on the TV and then it was noon and she took out the leftover chicken and made some chicken salad. When her husband got back the table was already set. She got out the Diet Pepsi and watched him eat. He didn't have too much to say, other than that he had run into Donald Foster and his new wife.

   "What does she look like?" Pamela said.

   "About twenty."

   Pamela nodded. "I figured as much."

   Her husband wiped his mouth and said, "I'm gonna watch the game," and got up and went to the den with the newspaper. At halftime he'd come out to get some snacks so she put the snacks on the table and did the dishes and straightened out the kitchen. She thought about getting dressed again but decided not to. She went out back and did a load of laundry and swept up a little and checked the house plants. She scratched her ear and felt a short, stiff hair deep inside which proved too tiny to pinch out with her fingernails so she got some tweezers and tried to remove it but couldn't get a grip and found this very annoying and worked at it for a quarter of an hour without success and had to leave it where it was. Now her ear felt raw. Clearly there were things you couldn't get at, like parasites or an itch in the wrong place, and would have to live with.

   After the football game her husband spent an hour looking for some golf magazine and she helped him turn the house upside down. Then they had a light supper and watched some TV. One of the kids called and they chatted for a while. It was chilly in the evening so she put on a sweater and watched some more TV. One of the commercials reminded her that they were running out of toilet paper so she got up and made a note on her shopping list. She asked her husband if he wanted coffee or anything but he said no, he was fine, so she came back and sat down in the chair she always sat in when they watched TV together. At eleven o'clock her husband turned off the TV and said, "Let's go to bed." After they got into bed he signaled to her that he wanted to have sex, but she couldn't get into it so she lay there like a zombie until he finished. Then she went to wash and heard him snoring. She opened the medicine cabinet and took out the sleeping pills. The bottle was almost full. She poured half the pills into the palm of her hand and looked at them. Then she counted them and for no real reason rounded off the number. The glass was in a glass holder with their toothbrushes. She filled it and took a sip, holding the pills in her other hand. Then she looked at herself in the mirror, without thinking, without anything in her mind at all. After a while she poured the pills back into the bottle and went back to bed, blinking very hard in the dark room. She had come very close to ending her life without really knowing why or even wanting to.            

* * * * *

Fred Skolnik is the author of 4 novels: The Other Shore (Aqueous Books, 2011) and Death (Spuyten Duyvil, 2015) under his own name and Rafi’s World and The Links in the Chain (both in 2014) under his Fred Russell pen name. His stories and essays have appeared in around 200 journals, including TriQuarterly, The MacGuffin, Los Angeles Review, Prism Review, Gargoyle, Literary House Review, Words & Images, Third Coast, Polluto, Underground Voices, Palooka and The Recusant. 

Just Being ME

by Sheena Singh

Looking at the mirror
I pondered at the reflection:
the time line of my life
flashed before my eyes…

I spent my entire life
believing in being right
fighting against all odds,
the dark and the mighty..
standing up for justice.

I was being someone
who's just upright..
I was being someone
who’s just ME..

Most call it a gift
being brave to fight
against all odds..
I thought it a rift;

In my plans to have
everyone besides me
I lost the love of those
who mattered most to me…

I sang and I preached
with all my heart,
that it was the only part
of who I was meant to be.

The day I would know
I can never let go
of my rage for perfection;
I know I'll be fine
and to God I'm near...

I just wanted love,
this gift of obsession
for everything that’s sane
seemed a curse from above!

Shall I pretend not to hear
nor see or feel
the vice of being right?
block my conscience
else my pains shall double?

The Lord made it clear
that i grow stronger..
the good, the bad, the ugly
would add to my strength.

Be aware who you are.
from yourself, do not hide
The truth cannot hide
forever in lies.
. 

Thank you God
for making me see,
that I'm good enough
if I just be ME...

salt pillar

by Jill Crainshaw

a single sentence
timeless taboo frozen in time

“Remember Lot’s wife” they warn

brackish disdain dripping from their words
they quote sacred statutes
“she slipped from truth”
“disobeyed”
“sinned against God”
“lingered in her love for the world”

what sight cursed your eyes when you looked back?
or did what you see bless instead? bittersweet
benedictory acknowledgement of what happened
back there
that thing about which we shall never speak
“look not behind thee” commanded almighty voices

was it worth it, the stolen glance that sealed your fate
calcified you in our objectifying gaze?
you refused to remember to forget
how he looked away
willing to barter still innocent daughters
to satiate savage
men pounding on the door of
home sweet? home

ah, ancient unnamed friend,
we cannot forget to remember you

could not did not

turn your back

we must

turn back
follow the path your anguished eyes seasoned with truth

see the terror
witness the horror
mourn the wounds
be healed

if we can

stand as pillars
in our own daughters’ deserts

salt of the earth

* * * * *

Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She enjoys exploring how words give voice to unexpected ideas, insights and visions.

Push the Stop Button

by Jill Crainshaw

Katelyn loves to dance.
Twice around the sun and
she is discovering
music and her body
and how the two are meant to be together.
We rode a Ferris wheel, Katelyn and I,

noses pressed to the window
of our swaying gondola.
“Three times around,”

says the red-garbed amusement attendant,

“unless you need to stop.

Push this button if you do.”

I study the button. Katelyn studies the view.
We sashay into the celestial ballroom

where Independence Day fireworks
twirl and turn.
Cars shrink.
Blue umbrella tops hide diners
as they eat “the world’s best burger.”
The second time around,
Katelyn points, wiggles, laughs.
She doesn’t know and I don’t either
that in three more rotations of the earth
a truck will careen through screaming city crowds
in a place across the ocean just below us,
music decanting out of broken bodies

onto the street.
We crest the top and begin our descent.
I eye the stop button.
Katelyn loves to dance.

* * * * *

Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She enjoys exploring how words give voice to unexpected ideas, insights and visions.

Sea Change

by Amy Hughes

I miss you. Or perhaps,

it’s you that’s missing from me.

There’s a drained ocean

on your side of my sheets.

I’m all aware, in all of me

of the vacuum that loudly breathes

in the falling dark

those cooler nights

when I shut my curtains before the sun’s

gone out, and lie awake

in searing, undernourished light.

Sometimes I feel drowned

in thoughts of you. But my honesty –

cruel and sharp-toothed thing –

suggests it’s just a feeling I am missing:

that peculiar filled-ness of the spaces you exist in.

The way a room with you inside

suddenly brims

with lights, shifting, and life

and the feeling we felt

on that purple-skied

and premature-moon-lit night.

The desert slept under the stars

but to our itching eyes

it seemed to buzz. Bare terrain

it seemed to us back then:

pale Martian ground receding

to oblivions too far to see.

I miss the way

your body filled these sheets.

They say every desert

was an ocean once, but the sky

that bleeds around my curtain’s not the one

we kissed beneath

with lights, shifting, and life

I can hear it breathe

and rasping taunt into a restless night.

The rains will come, and drum

red earth into a sea.

‘Til then I starve.

You are missing from me.

                                    a fairy tale

                                    by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

                                    are you a wonderful frog

                                    with jeweled eyes

                                    because you would not love a witch

                                    sweet prince,

                                    have you met the Sleeping Beauty

                                    that I am:

                                    sleeping

                                    because of apples . . .

January 21, 2017        

by Kit Goldpaugh

those who can march, do.

those who can’t, knit.

nobody asked are you going. 

cast on sixty pink stitches

we asked where, how, when. 

knit three, purl two, knit two

we link arms, raise fists, wear hats.

at the end of the row, purl three.

by car, by bus, by train we

repeat the pattern of row one, starting with purl

converge with purpose

repeat the pattern for four inches

respect Mother Earth

knit a row

we are her daughters

purl a row

fear us

repeat for eight inches

around the globe

                                                            repeat pattern from first four inches

on corners and bridges and parks      

cast off

march the women

fold knitting inside out

sisters

stitch sides together

in pink pussy caps

.                       poke out the ears

* * * * *

Kit Goldpaugh is a retired middle school English teacher and member of the Writing Gals.

Towards an Epitaph

by Sherri Turner

I will not yield.

I will stand firm and let myself be counted.

I will not have my weaknesses revealed,

and this small thing to which I have amounted

will be preserved, be safe behind my shield,

so when my final story is recounted

the least that can be said will be ‘She did not yield’.

* * * * *

"Towards an Epitaph" was previously published on a forum website.

Quarry

by Sherri Turner

Shall I take you there,

where the lime-steeped waters

reflect the blue sky green,

where iron cliffs

rise like sculptures

and swallows swoop and soar?

Will you turn to me and smile

and say how lovely,

how perfect?

Will you know about the bitten rock below,

where metal teeth gouged and fed

and left an ugly scar?

Will you think it so beautiful

from beneath the turquoise surface?

* * * * *

"Quarry" was previously published on a forum website. 

Dear Friends of Women's Voices: I am fresh out of voices to post and Writing In A Woman's Voice will go on hiatus until I get some new voices to post. If you have something for Writing In A Woman's Voice, please send it along. I am happy to post previously published work, so long as you have the rights to it.

I do have something special planned for Writing In A Woman's Voice for the March 2017 full moon (March 12, 2017) and the day after, as well subsequent full moons. More about this later (probably as late as March 11, 2017). Until then, or until new work comes in . . . we are not here to be quiet!

I ♥ You, Honey

by Kappa Waugh

I’m searching the ultra romantic section,

puffy satin hearts, starched lace: “Dot

your signature scent here,” the insert

suggests.  Hmm, do they mean my cologne

or pheromones from my private parts?

Maybe not the tone I want to strike.  He is

a gas station flowers kind of guy.  He invariably

picks alstromeria, cheaper than roses

and a flower I can’t abide.

Let’s move on to the humorous.  Here’s one, a

colorful lizard, captioned “Iguana hold your

hand.”  Well, I’m a Beatles fan, but he really

likes the Clancy Brothers more.  Wonder if

they have one saying, “I love you more than

‘Danny Boy’ or Irish whiskey?

How about a kid’s card?  I grab one showing

kittens in a basket. Inside, “You’re PURRfect,

Valentine.”  But 1) he isn’t, and 2) he hates

cats,  and 3) he got a nosebleed on my (ironic)

“Hello, Kitty” sofa pillow, so I had to toss it.

Back at the humor section, I see a misplaced

romantic, pink ribbons, hearts, gold trim.  In

reading the flowery script, I think, “BINGO!”

Inside “Write your own fucking Valentine!”