The Letter

The fragile paper almost tore
with the pressure of her pen,
ink blotting, words bleeding.
So she wrote it out again
on thicker vellum.

The original words had fallen
like confetti from her hand – but
when she copied them out,
they did not express her emotion;
they seemed flat.

Heart fluttering with frustration,
hand slick with perspiration,
she focused on the punctuation;
the final full stop
a tiny heart.

And when she tucked the letter
in its envelope, she sealed it
with a gentle kiss, addressed it,
smoothed a stamp upon it,
hastened to the red post box  
and slipped it through the slot.

Kim M. Russell, 6th November 2024

The Letter’ by Mary Cassatt

Björn is hosting Open Link Night at the dVerse Poets Pub this Thursday, a chance to link up any one poem: new or old, one that may not have received much attention; one that has been rewritten; a poem for a missed prompt; or even a poem inspired by the OLN mini prompt.

Björn says that he has been thinking about writing and reading letters. While he admits that he has always struggled with letter writing, he sees it as a lost craft. Which is why he has given us free rein. I chose to be inspired by ‘The Letter’ by Mary Cassatt.

44 thoughts on “The Letter”

  2. Writing by hand slows us down. This rereading and rewriting are valuable for processing emotions. In turn, the recipient also gets to hold the writer’s words and reread them. (I always recognize my mom’s handwriting.) I like your poem for reminding me of these things. Thanks for sharing it.

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  3. There is a great feeling of completion and anticipation when the letter box swallows your letter. Email does not cut it. And I arc up over the derogatory ‘snail mail’ label.

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  5. Wonderful I love “The original words had fallen like confetti from her hand” Oh and how I know the feeling of just not being able to translate the feelings into words

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  9. The lost art of letter writing. But, now I wonder what she wrote with such love. I still enjoy sending and receiving cards in the mail. There is something wonderful about a tangible note from family or friends.

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  12. Kim. 💕 This is just so beautiful. Rewriting doesn’t have the same feeling. I know it. And what a perfect image to go with the lovely words. I was/am so smitten with writing letters. And Christmas cards. I did it for years. Letters twice a month mostly, but once a month when the babies were small. All to my mother who was the angel who planted the seed and the only one who responded consistently. After she died in 2014 I felt lost. Finally in 2017 I began blogging as if I was writing to her. But in heaven they don’t have a post office, I found out. I suffered. Then in 2019 I started a pen pal newsletter. I have a few dozen lovely peeps from WP as pen pals. Have been writing to them once monthly, religiously as I did with my mother.
    Except for this summer… I have paused them for tedious undertakings I’m involved with concerning Passport issues. Next week I have a trip to Taiwan and then a long wait but will resume writing to my pen pals again. I’ve already started drafting the letter.
    So this post speaks to me. Thank you. Sorry for the long comment. Bless you.

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    1. Thank you so much, Selma. When my husband and I got together he lived in London and I lived in Norfolk. He wrote me the most wonderful letters. I wrote to my mother, friends and my grandma when I lived in Germany, and I still have a letter from Grandma that she sent me in the seventies. I’m delighted my poem speaks to you.

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  13. I like the creativity of children when they would write (do they still write unless forced?). I’m reminded of this with the line ‘a tiny heart’, imagining sentences ending with them as a flourish. I once wrote a letter to a friend and used a different colour pen for each letter throughout the whole thing. Technology has removed a lot of this creativity, or moved it to different spaces, I guess.

    Nicely written Kim 👏

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  15. Naturally I sit here day-dreaming about the letter, why she wrote it, to whom she wrote, does she expect a response, etc etc. I have a box of letters various suitors [when I was single between marriages] over the years wrote … yes, my family will find them after I am gone. And they will smile, know their mother, their sister was a lady who lived life to the fullest. She had a past. Glorious and fully lived. A beautiful poem, Kim.

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  16. It’s a dying art, for sure, in this techno world, and should be revived. I remember as a teen, I always used to send letters. It was such a 90s thing to do! 😄 I guess it determines the writers from everyone else, doesn’t it? Enjoyed your thought-provoking poem, Kim.

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  20. A lovely response to the prompt, Kim, I have seen so many different handwritings over the Summer with the PoPoFest and they are sometimes hard to decipher – crammed into the space of a postcard (my own offerings included) but they have so much more character than those who cheat and type them out and stick them on…

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