THE LOVE LETTER.

A WOMAN WRITES LOVE LETTER.

She wonders how to begin her letter.
She knows he will read each word
Greedily for any hint of love. She knows
He will sniff the paper for any scent of her.

She leans an elbow on her writing desk
And clutches her pen tight. She has got
As far as, Dear John, but then the words
Stopped coming. Before she had sat down
To write, the words flowed through her
Mind like a rushing stream, now nothing.

She sucks the end of the pen. Say what
You would if you were face to face, her
Mother always said. She tries to imagine
He is there before her and what she would
Say if he was, but still no words will come.

He writes to her so fluently when he writes.
He always seems to know what to write
And how to put it into words. She tries again;
Puts the pen nib onto the paper, gripping
The pen tighter. She reads what she’s written.

Dear John. The pen moves, the words begin
To flow, her hand moves across the page,
The images come into her mind as she writes,
The things that they said last time they met,
The things they did, she blushes slightly,
That almost being caught out by the maid
In a state of undress. She pauses the pen
And sits gazing at the painting on the wall.

She looks back at the paper and starts again,
The words tripping over themselves to be put
Down in ink upon a page; the images open up
In her mind, the colours, the smells, the events.

The pen now stops. The love letter is written,
The writing done. She looks at the words
Then she seals it in an envelope and writes
His address. She pictures him reading it: in bed,
In his room, sleepy, in a state of his usual undress.

Author's Note

Pietro Antonio Rotari art work