Happy Valentine's Day

"I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps . . . [I] hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails, I want to eat your skin like a whole almond . . . I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes. And I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight, hunting for you, for your hot heart, like a puma in the barrens . . . ."

--From Pablo Neruda's book 100 Love Sonnets (translated by Stephen Tapscott), starting with "Love Sonnet XI"