Dear S.,
Our business is love letters. We write them sad as butterflies who only see flowers in photographs, forget-me-nots and widow’s tears. We write them with the stoic immutable hope of the orb-weaver gliding back and forth across a high-traffic threshold. We write them joyful as krill when the whale beached itself. We write them with animal imagery because we forget who we’re writing to, or I do, when my dog licks my hand and I think every being is kind, and it doesn’t matter how long it’s been since I’ve been bitten. We write them to invent kindness, or reinvent summer breezes. We write them as whispers into microphones and startle at feedback. We write them as plugs in the wall and try not to stick our fingers in. We write them with the rage dialed back to simmer so we don’t burn the words we’ll eat later through feeding tubes, because once upon a time we let the rage boil over, but watched foam and froth fizzle like July 5. We write them belatedly. We write them beckoningly. We write them to discover new colors, crystals, planets, perhaps with watered down gravity and low rent. We write them without knowing why, or we write them to find out why–why, why, mama? says my almost-four-year-old when we make letters in chalk and he likes the B better than his J and I think, of course he’s mine but how? We write them so we don’t forget how to write. We write them so we don’t forget. We write them just so. We write them to yes and to no, to nothings we dreamed as everythings. Or maybe none of this is true, maybe we are the dreams, trying to mean.
xo S.
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another writing mom 