Old Faithful

After Carol Ann Duffy's Valentine

When I was fifteen I wanted a boyfriend and I wanted
an onion. When I was fifteen and I wanted things to cling
to me as tightly as I clung on to the world. The poem
was revelatory. When we were fifteen we all wanted
boyfriends and onions to carry to school to show everyone,
Look, he gave me an onion, he understands me better than
anyone who's ever understood. We would cherish our onions.
We would start the Brown Onion Society. Oh Onion My
Onion. Our boyfriends, the onion-givers, would be adored and
we would be adored because of the adoration we'd been
given, in the papery rustle of a brown globe that would
hold firm in hopeful hands, like an apple for teacher. Spin the
Onion let it move through a montage. Every valentines I am
no longer fifteen but thinking how we are old and
onion-less. I smooth my hands on the wooden desk and I know
We are loosely holding the thought of it, the thought of us.