Dear you,
In the ‘90s, your parents wrote letters to each other while living on different continents. Sometimes when I return home, I pour over relics from that era, deciphering my dad’s handwritten poems on pages now tanned with age. I can’t help but think about how deliberately every vowel and consonant was placed on its eternal paper throne, now forever cocooned in a shoebox that rests above photo albums and old sneakers in a closet. The words that were then intended for an audience of one are now a family heirloom, perused by the human embodiment of the love they aimed to preserve across thousands of miles of separation. How is it that we trust the abyss of postage to cradle our heaviest words in paper-thin packaging?
Sincerely,
Myself
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Dear me,
With every envelope, we trace invisible lines of correspondence along landscapes large and small. Letters adorn maps with intricately woven webs of human connection despite the distance. Those spaces in between can be as big as opposite sides of the globe, or as infinitesimally small as the width of a hallway. My mom, a creative, always found fun ways to say “I love you” beyond uttering them before bed or dropping me off at school. At one point, we liked to fold up the phrase in paper and drop it off in hand-made mailboxes we taped to our bedroom doors. I could put my left hand on my mailbox and touch the other mailbox with my right at the same time – but those four and a half feet made space for my mom and I to find a love language in letters. Do you ever feel like letter writing – as an act – can say more than the actual words they contain?
Talk soon,
Yourself
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Dear you,
It’s ironic that a letter – as a noun – can be both a single alphabetic symbol or a multi-paragraph piece of structured writing. Letters are abstract. I once was pen-pals with a classmate I had only known online during the pandemic (but later became friends with in person). To call their messages to me “letters” alone would be an understatement: each one included a color-coordinated collaged envelope, a collection of aesthetic clippings and stickers, a personally curated playlist, and more. Opening one of them was like entering a big-top circus tent as a kid or walking into a dark room and being met with confetti and a surprise birthday celebration. I’ve kept and displayed each one: vibrant mementos from a time otherwise wrought with lonely quarantines and school on Zoom. I wish I could say the letters I sent back were matched in extravagance. Have you ever felt like your letters don’t communicate all that you wish you could say?
Xoxo,
Myself
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Dear me,
I love in letters, even when my affection feels too big to put on paper. That said, I feel like some letters aren’t meant to be sent. Sometimes I let my letters rot in a mailbox for unreciprocated feelings, addressed to people who may never hear me say “I love you” out loud. I know that if it never leaves my outbox, the hurt can never be returned-to-sender. I don’t know why writing it all down gives me any closure. Do you?
Warmly,
Yourself
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Dear you,
Spoken words are weightless: suspended, until someone plucks them from the air and molds them; repurposes them; replaces them; renounces them. Letters bring the words to the ground, bolstering them to truth. Letters keep us accountable – letters live on. Maybe immortalizing emotions in tangible forms makes them both real and digestible. How can you conquer a beast you’ve never actually seen face to face? How can you know yourself when the only version of you you’ve seen is an ephemeral reflection?
Perhaps you can write them a letter.
Love,
Myself
