Or I just heard it that way.

I am one with millions of people who look forward to Valentine’s Day only to realize we have no one to celebrate the season with. I just hope I am out of that sorry list before the redletter day that is February 14 comes. Or else, I’ll hang myself. No, I am just kidding. I am no desperate loveless bum. I am simply a bum.

Last week while I am under the spell of a long-time companion named sorrow, I stumbled upon a senryu on a poetry forum to which I belong. It reads:

Lovapalooza,

Staring at lovers

Embracing myself

It stabbed me in the heart! It was an excruciatingly painful experience. Six words, three lines, fifteen syllables of divine poetry—it outweighed the world I am used of shouldering. That night I still remember, I shed tears. I stared at the monitor blankly, without any thoughts but those little words that bit me and injected a powerful dose of paralyzing agony to my already dwindling spirit.

It has been a week since I read it yet it never fails to pierce in over and over as I reread it. Something is sure wrong I must admit. Why I am severely smitten by the poem is answered by the poem. Being alone is black. And I am black because I chose it. I am still sad because I still flirt with the Goddess of sadness that knocks on my room every night, that is beside the fact that I already publicly announced I found a reason to be happy. But how deep do I love? Is it as deep as how I was absorbed by the poem? I am not as sure as the sun is sure to lose energy. The surest of all is that I am in need of someone who can love me in the face of my fluctuations. I am in need of someone who can keep a love of a loser.

Closeup’s lovapalooza is a celebration of love. I am one with counting down. Although I don’t expect she’ll be there with me.