For Valentine’s Day, here are some quality love poems to share with your loved ones, or really anyone who’ll listen, frankly. (And yes, my headline this week is a reference to Gossip Girl, which is comfort television for me nowadays; I don’t relate to any of the characters at all, which means that their problems don’t stress me out while I do chores around the house while a season is playing.)

The Quiet World, Jeffrey McDaniel

In an effort to get people to look into each other’s eyes more, and also to appease the mutes, the government has decided to allot each person exactly one hundred and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear without saying hello. In the restaurant I point at chicken noodle soup.

I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover, proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.

I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn’t respond, I know she’s used up all her words, so I slowly whisper I love you thirty-two and a third times.

After that, we just sit on the line and listen to each other breathe.

One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII, Pablo Neruda 

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz, or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as one loves certain obscure things, secretly, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself, and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, I love you directly without problems or pride: I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love, except in this form in which I am not nor are you, so close that your hand upon my chest is mine, so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

Tamer and Hawk. Thom Gunn

 I thought I was so tough, But gentled at your hands, Cannot be quick enough To fly for you and show That when I go I go At your commands.

Even in flight above I am no longer free: You seeled me with your love, I am blind to other birds— The habit of your words Has hooded me.

As formerly, I wheel I hover and I twist, But only want the feel, In my possessive thought, Of catcher and of caught Upon your wrist.

You but half civilize, Taming me in this way.

Through having only eyes For you I fear to lose, I lose to keep, and choose Tamer as prey.

A Red, Red Rose. Robert Burns

O my Luve is like a red, red rose That’s newly sprung in June; O my Luve is like the melody That’s sweetly played in tune.

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi’ the sun; I will love thee still, my dear, While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve!

And fare thee weel awhile!

And I will come again, my luve, Though it were ten thousand mile.

A Birthday, Christina Rossetti 

My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a water’d shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Carve it in doves and pomegranates, And peacocks with a hundred eyes; Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleursde-lys; Because the birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me.

Lunchbox Love Note, Kenn Nesbitt 

Inside my lunch to my surprise a perfect heart-shaped love note lies.

The outside says, “Will you be mine?” and, “Will you be my valentine?”

I take it out and wonder who would want to tell me “I love you.”

Perhaps a girl who’s much too shy to hand it to me eye to eye.

Or maybe it was sweetly penned in private by a secret friend Who found my lunchbox sitting by and slid the note in on the sly.

Oh, I’d be thrilled if it were Jo, the cute one in the second row.

Or could it be from Jennifer?

Has she found out I’m sweet on her?

My mind’s abuzz, my shoulders tense.

I need no more of this suspense.

My stomach lurching in my throat, I open up my little note.

Then wham! as if it were a bomb, inside it reads, “I love you—Mom.”

Andrea Gutierrez is the editor of the Bryan County News.