To be honest, we aren’t big fans of Valentine’s Day. One need only peruse the array of pink and red spatulas and cookie cutters at Sur la Table to know Valentine’s is a commercial faux-liday. But we are romantics notwithstanding and never pass up an occasion for our own personal dose of lovey-dovey, usually preferring to write one another letters from the heart in lieu of material gifts. This year, though, we found a gift we could agree on: Monday Hearts for Madalene, a photographic love poem by San Francisco artist Page Hodel to her late partner, Madalene.

Monday Hearts takes its title from a private ritual shared by Page and Madalene from the earliest days of their courtship. The Oakland neighbors met when Page, a DJ, made a nervous trip across the street with a stack of homemade "nice-to-meet-you" CDs. Cue the fireworks: As Page says, “It was absolute love at first sight” for the DJ and the librarian. Soon after, Page, upon arriving home late from her Sunday night gigs at the turntables, took to crafting little hearts from household materials—flowers, buttons, spools of thread. Left on Madalene’s doorstep, the hearts served as a Monday morning “I love you.”

Less than a year later, in 2006, Madalene Rodriguez lost her life to ovarian cancer at age 46. The couple never married though Page wished they could; today her Facebook relationship status is, simply, “widowed.” Before Madalene passed, Page promised to make hearts for her as long as she should live. Thus far, she has never missed a Monday and swears she never will. “There will be a thousand hearts,” she promises. “Someday, there will be a million. Each one tells a different story, but the emotion is the same.”

One hundred of Pages’s hearts bloom from the pages of Monday Hearts for Madalene, proving that love lives on long after death. They are a graphic reminder that we do not choose the one we love. “Her smile is in every heart,” says Page, who believes wholeheartedly that Madalene can see them. “As a child, I had an imaginary friend, and now I have one as an adult. Only this time, she was real.”   

Monday Hearts for Madalene benefits the Women’s Cancer Resource Center in Oakland. The book can be purchased at abramsbooks.com, and a selection of Page’s photos is on view now at WCRC. Mondayheartsformadalene.com