Surprise me not tonight, but feed me well
on sustenance prepared with your clean hands.
Don’t give me sweets to chew, but if you tell
your love with fish and fruit, she understands
who doesn’t want a flower or a jewel,
and of your currency has no request,
but who for words would make herself a fool
and by a paragraph becomes obsessed.

I will not eat the chocolates you won’t buy.
I won’t smell absent flowers or admire
the lingerie you didn’t think to try.
But I’ll give me the little I require
that you cannot – of unbought Valentines,
I tender to myself these fourteen lines.