Valentine

• Title of Valentine sets up certain expectations of conventional and commercialised love which the poem fails to deliver.
• Refrains disrupt the poem structurally. First two refrains suggest the fragility of the relationship. A sense of decay which suggests the irreparable nature of their love.
• "your heels emptying before me/evacuated as the channels of our hearts"

  Physical distance symbolic of the distance in their relationship. Setting of Paris - links love and pain.
• "each step filling the curve of your hip"

  Highlights the sexual nature of the relationship - which is all they have as the emotional connection has deteriorated.
• "wrecked voyagers" 


  Trying to resolve their argument through physical intimacy. Extend metaphor of shipwreck, suggests impossibility of fixing their relationship.
• "uncertain in their exhaustion whether to laugh or weep"

  Instability of their relationship. A fundamental ambiguity - tired of sustaining the relationship.
• Valentine flips the power dynamics Sheers usually writes from - the female character holding the most power (similar in Show although manifests negatively).