A tipsy Valentine for evening by Carrie Magness Radna

Wanna come back to you, cool evening.
The harsh shine of day kills my buzz,
making my brain fuzzy like a lost kitten.
Wanna come back to the nighttime;
its lights shine on too brightly,
leading all the tipsy drunk girls home.
They are so smitten, stoned & stung
by those cool people in the crowd
with bruised egos & chapped lips,
shaking their hips to the music,
fueled with vodka lubricants &
lemon mints, waiting for love 
to come get them, or watching love
leaving them by the back door,
wondering what could have been—
& then, once again, I’m glad to
hang out with you, as you
carry me home again, when
all the weird noises die down,
in this town where the good kids 
stay in, where once again,
maybe, Baby,
we can all feel safe again.

A 2020 nominee for Best of the Web, Carrie Magness Radna is an audiovisual cataloger at New York Public Library, a choral singer and a poet who loves traveling. Her poems have previously appeared in The Oracular Tree, Mediterranean Poetry, Muddy River Poetry Review, The Rainbow Project (Poets Wear Prada), Shot Glass Journal, Poetry Super Highway, Spillwords.com, Cajun Mutt Press, Polarity eMagazine, Walt’s Corner, The Poetic Bond (VIII-X), First Literary Review-East and Jerry Jazz Musician. Her first chapbook, Conversations with dead composers at Carnegie Hall (Flutter Press) was published in January 2019, and her self-published chapbook, Remembering you as I go walking (Boxwood Star Press) was published in August 2019. Her first poetry collection, Hurricanes never apologize (Luchador Press) was published in December 2019. Her new poetry collection, In the blue hour, is now published by Nirala Publications (January 2021). Born in Norman, Oklahoma, she now lives with her husband in Manhattan.  https://carriemagnessradna.com