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Welcome to the home of the Love Letters Aren’t Just For Lovers page. This is where you’ll find the ten winners of the love letter contest, as well as the jury’s comments, a place to leave your own two cents. Don’t be shy!
First though, if you’d like to go strait to info on the Love Letter e-class, click here.
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And now, if you will, a little history…
It was late at night, Georgian Bay, and the last beautiful weekend of the summer. A group of friends and I sat around a campfire, talking about the big letters of our lives — the ones from lovers and grandparents and best friends, the ones we’d written but never mailed, the ones we kept folded up in our wallets for years.
All of a sudden, I realized — this is everything I care about. For years I’ve been helping people recognize the power of their written voices. These letters, it seemed, held that power undiluted.
Over pancakes the next morning, we brainstormed ways to coax more love letters into the world; not just romantic ones (though that’s part of it) but simple, beautiful pages of words about friendship and memory and brightness. I decided to try running a love letter contest, and to offer a few free workshops to help people get started. I had no idea if anyone would respond.
The autumn filled with love. The letters rolled in and the workshops filled to over-capacity. Prizes were donated, articles were written and news of the contest spread across the globe. A wonderful woman named Linda Lee even sent a song about love letters, that she wrote, inspired by the contest. I was completely overwhelmed by the passionate and heart-felt response.
After many evenings spent of sighing and wiping tears off my keyboard, I decided I couldn’t do this alone, so I appointed a jury from seven of my most committed students. They were incredibly wonderful – committed, passionate and full of heart. (And yes, I wrote them all love letters!) One snowy evening in December, we got together in my living room for red wine, laughter and some tough decisions. It wasn’t easy to let any of the letters go.
There were three letters that everyone agreed touched us in a way that was completely new and unique. These are the “Jury Favorites”, directly below. However, we couldn’t stop there. Below those are seven more letters, one chosen by each jury member, that caught their attention in a special way.
So, have a read. Fall in love. Drop a comment about the ones that move you most. More than anything, take inspiration from these brave writers. Somewhere close by, there’s paper just waiting to hold the words your heart wants to tell.
Inspired to write your own? I have taken everything I learned in the fall, and distilled it into a 7-week self-guided e-class on love letter writing! Participants will receive gentle guidance, inspiration and structure to create at least seven brand-new love letters. Click here to learn more, and to sign up.
Ever so warmly,
Jury's Favourites
Autumn 2010
I remember the exact moment that you became real for me. We were slumped in the living room watching that cheesy Hugh Grant film, “About A Boy”. I moved in my half of the loveseat, uncomfortable after an hour of poor TV posture. Actually, I just turned, just a little to the side. Then, the strangest thing happened, my belly came after. All of a sudden, we were two people. There was me…and there was you.
You, growing inside of me but still whole, still an individual soaring down your own path at your own will of your own volition. It was momentous…for me, at least. Perhaps not so much for you. But then, sometimes that’s the way with love.
You see, after weeks of vague symptoms that could have been a stomach bug, or a couple of extra peanut butter cups, or jeans that had shrunk in the wash, after weeks…right there…was you. Even Michael, your father, noticed. He leaned over placing his face up against my growing midsection and cooed into me – into you.
“Doo doo doo doo, hello in there.”
Lovely, welcome human being. Small and delicate boy or girl. Ours.
Months after the little plus sign told us of your existence, it was as if you had been biding your time, or maybe we were just too busy to notice, or maybe it was the parental theme of the movie that prompted us to look – bless you, Hugh Grant. Either way, I remember the moment so clearly. Hello in there.
I remember it just as I remember the look on the ultrasound technician’s face a few weeks later – blank and professional. She wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t talk to me. There’s a problem. And it wasn’t that I was lying, cold and naked and alone, on a thin sheet of crumpled paper while your father paced the plastic coated waiting room. It was just a routine checkup. It should have been fine. But her face told me it wasn’t fine. All the while that no one would speak to me, her face told me the truth.
Hours later, Michael and I were walking around downtown, too upset to go home, too afraid to do anything but walk, calling the midwifery clinic every hour to see if our midwife was able to talk with us, to tell us what was happening. But we knew. We knew you had left us for good.
That night, we got the phone call – the call that no parent ever wants to receive. It shouldn’t happen this way.
“I’m afraid I have bad news. There is no heartbeat.”
And you, still there and yet not. Still inside me, but no longer growing. Alive, but only in our hearts.
Discharged from care, alone in a way that so few can understand, I couldn’t help but feel the weight of guilt come crushing down on me. How can one deny those feelings? Bad mother. Unsuitable. Infertile. Not fit.
After many hours in the emergency room, many more crying hard with my head pressed against the floor, I have come to understand the great truth. There is no fault in situations like this. Baby, it’s not your fault. And it’s not mine.
But I’m sorry. Even still, I am so sorry.
We didn’t choose a name. Long ago, we had decided it would be best not to. We didn’t realize at the time that decision would help us let go of you – help us move on.
There is no way to prepare for this kind of emotional rollercoaster. There is no way to know how or when things will be fine, when they will be okay again. Right now, all I know is that you will always be my Baby Number One, that I am so truly sorry, and that I love you…regardless.
With all my heart, little one,
Mom
I felt incredibly daunted at the task of commenting on this beautiful letter, and it was only after sitting on it for a few days that I was able to articulate why. It is hard to add any exterior words to what is such a perfect, complete breath of love between two intensely connected spirits. Telling it through these two moments was incredibly powerful. Hope and loss, linked in love as they are so often linked in life. This piece made me cry. Thank you for sharing it.
~ Tamara Cooper
I found this letter incredibly tender and moving. It wasn’t until the end that I felt the deep loss that the writer experienced. The writing was beautiful and so hopeful. There were lines that I read over and over. “My belly came after.” “All of a sudden, we were two people.” “And you still there, and yet not.” “Alive, but only in our hearts.”
~ Dorothy Rusoff
In the opening paragraph, the attention to detail made the letter very real. The writer wasn’t watching a movie, but “a cheesy Hugh Grant film”. She placed me right there with her on the couch. The detail continues into the second paragraph, when she describes the baby growing inside her, not just growing but, “Soaring down your own path at your own will of your own volition.” This makes the child so very real. This is followed by the strong, short sentences full of love and hope… “Lovely, welcome human being. Small and delicate boy or girl. Ours.” The abrupt shift to the scene with the ultrasound technician caught me off guard and immediately shifted the entire message from one of immense love to immense, immeasurable loss. “And you, still there and yet not.” What a poignant and tender way to describe loss. I see the last several paragraphs as a replication of the stages of loss, denial, guilt/anger and acceptance. It all creates a sense of unconditional, never-ending love for the lost child. Extremely courageous writing! This letter touched me to my core.
~ Lorraine Lederer
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Helen Tremethick is a writer, a photographer, and a gardener; all of which she’d do professionally if the opportunity presented itself. Currently, she lives in the old City of York where she can be found amidst strewn papers and hearty vegetables. You can read updates about her garden, and her life, at zeromilediet.net.
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Jury's Favourites
Running Eastward I thought the line that tethered me to you would be pulled so taut over the prairies that by Manitoba it would be hair-thin and quivering under the tension. And once my feet touched Ontario it would snap like an elastic band and I would watch its limp, frayed end spring backwards and disappear over the Rockies, to where that love was three years ago buried, somewhere under a Vancouver street, now pushed down and down and packed in tight by litres of rainwater and the weight of new foundations.
But even now, with this much time and land between, an old song or cold sheets at night will fill its still lungs with a sudden rush of warm air and shudder the earth – did you feel that? That slight tremor? – send a reverberation from the soles of my feet to stop in the space between my hipbones and my heart. Ah yes, there you are.
It wasn’t that fiery, up-against-the-wall love, ours. It was soft and it was pure. It was true—not capital T true love, but without pretense and without falsehood. Fearless love, love that didn’t know otherwise, never had reason to doubt constancy and absolute acceptance (but how could I not trust you, with your cheeks red like they were always blushing from shyness?).
Remember how we discovered each other, mapped our skin, how after so many years I knew each degree of your body, could draw your lines without a protractor or a compass using only my mechanical memory. You were in my fingertips.
Remember how we blasted through to claim Love as if it was for the taking, driving our flag into the ground with the arrogance and entitlement of youth (it was rightfully ours and were we not deserving?). Love now, it is such a timid and wary thing. It hides in the corner, flinches at sudden movements, wants the lights turned off. It is something to be gained with enough penance, bestowed upon us only when we are worthy, which we so rarely feel we are.
Falling in love then was us like melted metal pouring into each other, forming something greater than our independent parts, so smooth-surfaced, unmarked. Not like it is now, trying to find love, all of us chipped, battle-scarred pieces knocking together seeking some semblance of symmetry, never attaining it, having lived too much, too splattered with the stains of experience to ever fuse like that again.
Do you remember that last line of that letter you wrote? I wish I could let you let me go, you said. And you did. You must have. You’re homesteading now, up North in front of a fire made with wood you chopped yourself, with a girl who writes poems. Me, I bounce off skyscrapers and skid down streetcar tracks (now in our natural habitats—like a fish and a bird we probably never would have found a way…). It’s easier here, not listening to rain on the window, not finding deposits of our history at bus stops and under bar stools…so many places to find so many other souls traveling lonely, together in our solitude.
But still I remember (and truly–and this is the point–would not want to forget) how I would look at you and feel so much wordless nameless feeling. It would start at the centre of my chest and spread through my limbs like something hot and melting, making me expand and swell like baking dough. It never got out, not all of it, the hundreds of thousands of times I told you I loved you. It was too much to scoop up with just those words and there were inevitably bits that spilled over the sides of the phrase or got caught in the centre of the O’s. I guess all those left behind crumbs mean you never knew my love in its entirety.
But I will say it now–even without any chance of you ever hearing, I will say it anyways – that I love you so far down and so up above, in an untouchable space that will not be shaken by earthly things. And even though it breaks my heart in half and half and half again–if this keeps up, I’ll just have a pile of little bits under my left breast, bouncing and tumbling with each beat)–my God I am thankful for you, for us, for that love that will never happen again by its very nature, wide-eyed and so in awe of its never before felt enormity.
At least I have known it.
E
If I had to make a list of all of the phrases and images that I loved in this letter, Chris would cut half of them out for lack of space. There are so many stunning pieces of language, from the love, “pushed down and down and packed in tight by litres of rainwater,” to the things, “caught in the centre of the Os.” The imagery is great, but what gets me about this writing is how the writer manages to distill all of these life truths into sentences that make me nod and think, “Yes, that’s right, I’ve been there. I know.” First love, and the way that it changes you. “Yes.”
- Tamara Cooper
In my notes next to the first paragraph of this love letter I wrote: “Youza!” What a great opening, and it just gets better and better. There are so many wonderful descriptions of love and falling in love in this letter: “Melted metal pouring into each other, forming something greater than our independent parts, so smooth-surfaced, unmarked.” That is just so exquisite. This is a love letter written by someone who has known deep, life-altering love. “So far down and so up above, in an untouchable space that will not be shaken by earthly things.” She expresses it robustly, with joy and gratitude. “I am thankful for you, for us, for that love that will never happen again by its very nature, wide-eyed and so in awe of its never before felt enormity.” My heart swells with these words and I, too, am grateful.
~ Philip Hare
I’ve read and reread this letter and each time the final line leaves me with a gasp, a breath caught in my throat. Oh, writer of this letter, thank you for the ways you’ve cracked yourself open to describe the enormity of first love, of brave love, of love that wants the lights turned out. Thank you for finding the words for that “untouchable space that will not be shaken by earthly things,” You give us all permission to go there and to feel ourselves in that place of vulnerability, spirit and humanity. This letter, dear writer, is a gift to everyone who has loved.
~ Carrie Klassen
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Post-university, Elena Banfield is taking some time to explore the curious animal that is herself. She is now a coffee-slinging urban explorer plotting her next move and contemplating a far-off future in International Law. Somewhat recently she awoke her dormant passion for writing, which turned out to be an elusive and fickle beast. While it can be endlessly frustrating, the rare moments when she catches it are worth the pursuit.
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Jury's Favourites
My darling,
It’s raining outside, and cold. My thoughts turn to you, my first and longest-lasting love. It surprises me to call you this; it means so much I can barely pass words through clumsy fingers.
I’d forgotten our connection until last summer, when, on a whim, I walked through the gardens rich in colour and kiln yards redolent with memory. Long grass wet my feet and ankles, and golden angles of late-day sunlight helped me remember.
Barn, red barn, that my grandfather built: smelling of clean dust, dirt floor, and tobacco-slats piled in corners. That old shed nearby, once our playhouse, now stores machine parts. The falling-down kilns hold the ghosts of our hard labor. Your buildings anchor me.
Your hills I’ve known intimately, through summer harvest and hard-packed snow. Each fall, I’ve watched the sumac go from green to glowing crimson. I’ve watched rainwater pool in the low-spot in the yard. Your seasons are my own.
I have laboured on you and cursed at you; sweated under hot sun with blistering hands. I’ve hardened my feet on your stones. I’ve bloodied my arms stacking branches from your storm-tossed trees. I’ve witnessed parts of you severed and sold.
I’ve fucked in your fields. I’ve pleasured myself with the sound of wind in leaves, attuned to approaching voices. Making tender hollows in the long green grass; turning my face to the sun, watching tiny crickets hop stalk to stalk. I’ve known God through you. I’ve slept sound as you held me.
I had to stop loving you because I needed to leave. It took me years in the city to forget the pull of sunsets in your treeline. I severed myself, and am only now allowing return, founded on the prospect of loss.
If we lose you- put up signs, empty the barns, the yards, our home- we will be heartbroken. You hold the spirits of our young selves, of our grandparents, of the labourers who have since died in faraway lands. We dig and find shards of horseshoes, bricks, and arrowheads: our histories buried in your body. You hold us in ways I never imagined.
You are my overwhelming, unrelenting love; you mean more to me then anything or anyone. I dream of your rich soil, rye fields gleaming bright, and the silence of the great cottonwoods down by the riverbend.
Yet I’m torn. Do I return to you? Enslave myself as my parents do–work so hard I can no longer see your beauty? Do I give in? Can I resist?
Someday, I will come back to you, my husband, my child, my caretaker, my responsibility, my first and longest lasting love. Until then, please, remain with us.space
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I feel as if I could have written much of this love letter myself. Having grown up on a farm, I have a keen appreciation for its sentiments. One paragraph in particular had me just vibrating: “I’ve fucked in your fields….I’ve known God through you. I’ve slept sound as you held me.” When I first read it I yelled out, “Yeah baby!” There are so many sensuous morsels in this letter: “Long grass wet my feet and ankles…I’ve pleasured myself with the sound of wind in leaves….the pull of sunsets in your treeline…” Sigh. Just makes me want to roll naked in a hay field. I want to thank this writer for putting into words some of my most intimate desires, and for doing it so beautifully.
~ Philip Hare
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I love the imagery, the use of words, the lines like: “I can barely pass words through clumsy fingers.” “Barn, red barn, that my grandfather built.” “Your seasons are my own.” What I love the most is that this is a love letter about land. The concept of land is rich with meaning, history, ownership, love and leaving. This letter is unique and personal and yet it captures the experience of living in between two places, and how that experience is both beautiful and sad. “I had to stop loving you because I needed to leave.” “Our histories buried in your body. You hold us in ways I never imagined.” These lines speak volumes to so many of us who are connected to soil we aren’t able to live on. Thank you for this beautiful letter.
~ Salma Saadi
What a beautiful love letter! This speaks meaningfully of the love affair between land and self. It’s about pleasure, memory, sensation, longing, remembrance and regret. It reminds us of our ties to the past; we may leave the past behind, but the past never leaves us. “You hold us in ways I never imagined.” I shudder at this line, even now, on my 5th read. This letter holds me. It wraps me in a cloak of rich imagery and sensory detail. The writer’s clean writing guides the reader smoothly and flawlessly. We travel with her, back into the past, to the “ghosts of our hard labor,” “summer hills”, and “the sound of wind in leaves.” The language is fresh and the tone intimate. My darling, my darling, my darling it is.
~ Sarah Switzer
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Melissa A. Benner loves to make delicious food, run environmental workshops, write, and travel the world. She just completed a series of profiles of small family farms for the Ecological Farmers’ Association of Ontario*. She currently works for the North York Harvest Food Bank, and coordinates a college certificate in sustainable local food. She also courts a side-interest in writing and teaching erotica. Melissa lives in Toronto, but dreams of fields and forests.
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Juror's pick: Lorraine
Did you ever know how much I loved your hands? You’d probably laugh, and tell me I was being silly, but it’s true. I loved everything about your hands. As a kid I would sit in your lap and put my hand in yours, my puffy, smooth, boring child’s hand into your fascinating ones. I loved the feel of your skin, like warm, delicate fabric draped over the branches of thick veins reaching up to your fingers. I loved the way you could look at me through your fingers without having to spread them. I’d see you winking through the branches of your fingers as I sat on your lap facing you. I loved your engagement and wedding rings, hanging lazily to one side, too small to be pulled over your knuckles, yet so loose you could make them swing crazily around your finger for my enjoyment.
Instead of seeing your hands as old, they looked intricate and well used. Each callus and cut spoke of how busy you kept yourself and how age did not mean idleness for you. I would watch you crochet while talking or watching television and see intricate afghan webs and thick, warm sweaters emerge from mere balls of yarn. We would all vie for the next Grandma Creation that you would give as presents, putting in our wish lists months before birthdays and Christmas. I still have mine with that tag you put on all our gifts that read “Made With Love by Grandma”.
Now that I’ve grown up, I do my best to live by your example. I may not be ready to crochet sweaters and afghans, but I do make scarves, and have mastered simple toys that I make for my youngest daughter. Sometimes when I walk in the bright sunshine I put my hand up to look, not shielding myself from the sun but to glimpse it winking at me through the gaps forming in between my fingers, and I think of you.
Instead of deterioration I saw beauty in age, instead of a decline I saw a strength that was left when the energy and engorgement of youth was finally cleared away. As I sat in your lap and placed my hand in yours I looked forward to the day I am as old as you were that I would have hands like yours. That life and usefulness does not end with one’s career or when the kids have left home. You made me aspire to be old and to love life right up to the end. That lesson, even if it had been the only lesson you taught me, makes me continue loving you and hope one day I will have hands, gnarled, thin, bony and beautiful, just like yours.
Christine DeVuono is an artist, karate master and mother of three, who recently moved from a small British village to Guelph, Ontario.
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What I loved about this piece is that it was not just a love letter to a Grandma in general, but it focused on one part that most of us overlook – the grandma’s hands. Throughout the letter, the writer tells the story of the Grandma and her interaction with her grandchildren through a running commentary on the hands. In the beginning she does not refer to old, gnarled hands, but “the feel of your skin, like warm, delicate fabric draped over the branches of thick veins…” The detail of her interaction with her Grandma when she was sitting on her lap was intense and written from the wonderful innocence of a child’s view…….the gaps between the fingers, the Grandma winking at her through the fingers, the rings sliding and swinging around the fingers only for the child’s amusement. The use of the term Grandma’s Creation rather than Grandma’s sweaters or scarves to me reflected a great respect and love for “everything Grandma”.
Then out of nowhere came the phrase “engorgement of youth” – wow – I just loved that phrase – what a great dichotomy to the graceful aging process of the Grandma. In the end, the writer says her Grandma made her “…aspire to be old and to love life right up to the end.” If that isn’t love, I am not sure what is.
Overall, in my opinion, the piece was reminiscent of other cultures where age is revered, respected and aspired to rather than feared and hidden away. This was simply an uplifting letter of love told from the unique perspective of a child’s view of her grandma’s hands. I love it and also wish I knew her Grandma!
~ Lorraine Lederer
Juror's pick: Tamara
I should have written you from the arctic. Now that I’m home, the tedious routine of everyday life steals some of the mystique… But I didn’t know until I was home that I would want to. We are so absent from each other’s lives. I never trust until you are on my doorstep, that I will actually see you. I never expect phone calls, I am surprised by every e-mail, every instant message, every communication.
A soft landing. I’m sure you must have felt inadequate – my sister’s kid died, can you call me? One never knows what to say in such situations. Honestly, I didn’t either. But the fact that you were there, a tether to keep me sane as I sat in that airport, waiting and waiting and waiting for my plane. Grief-stricken in paradise, surrounded by vacationers, tanned and rested and happy. I think your voice was the only thing that kept me grounded, kept me from falling over the edge.
And I never said thank you. I don’t think. Of course, there’s a lot I don’t remember from the past year, like – were we on one of our breaks, that night I e-mailed you from Hawaii? Why don’t I remember talking to you again for weeks afterwards?
We are so hard, you and I. On ourselves, on the world, on each other. Sometimes, I think we both want to prove how easily we can live without each other; how easily we can walk away.
And yet.
I will never forget, you saying to me, years ago – so many years now, that when you imagined being with me, you thought about the soft spaces in between.
Mere months later, I found myself, once again, cradling a pound of flesh. So tangled, this stark, remote community. A hard people. Hard like a rock-face. Hard like us. My hands on her feet while she wept. We’d both walked this road before, this birthing too early business.
I can hardly remember what was said, when you called that night. Except… You said you wished I was in your bed, so you could hold me, and stroke my hair, and I tried to be cavalier about the whole thing, because anything else could lead to hysteria. And I know, I know you hate my stoicism, but I was still alone, far above the tree line.
So. the soft landing. the hotel. the city. two days. of your hands. on me, in me, around me. in my hair, on my cheek, on my neck and collarbones. on every tender, vulnerable part of my body.
That’s what this letter is about, after all. It’s a thank you for the soft landing. It’s a thank you for your uncanny, genius timing and unconditional desire. It’s a thank you, for the soft spaces in-between. That we find. That we carve out. Somehow, finding the hollows, and filling them up.
There is always, always so much more to say, but I will leave it at this: thank you for continuing to say I love you, all these years later, when I still can’t.
Anonymous
This letter stood out for me right away. It struck me as a wonderful tribute to long love, the kind that weaves in and out of a life for many years, with the kind of person who is just always there at the right moment. This is hard stuff to write, hard to put into words, but the writer dives in and does it anyway, and with a deep honestly and sense of tenderness. The last paragraphs in particular resonated with me for a long, long time. Thank you for all the mystery, beauty and hard-won truth. Absolutely beautiful.
~ Tamara Cooper
Juror's pick: Dorothy
Pardon my disembodied letter to you. I am writing to you because you deserve some undivided consensual attention.
Since puberty, you have received a lot of attention on a daily basis. You’re large and demand a lot of attention. Sometimes it’s negative and non-consensual. But sometimes it’s consensual and sexy. I both fear and love this attention. Sometimes it’s disconcerting because you are (non-consensually) objectified and I feel unsafe. And I’m angry that we have to feel unsafe because of this attention. I don’t think you should have to change because of this negative attention. I think patriarchal, sexist traditions need to change. But our relationship is not that simple.
Most of the time, I love you but sometimes I dislike you. It takes a lot of work to carry you around. I have carried you around for so many years and I’m so grateful for our messy relationship. The pain that you have caused me for so many years has caused me to be so present and attentive to you. Through the pain, I have learned so much. I love to admire your beauty and I love it when others recognize your beauty. Your quirky shape and stretch marks make a winning combination.
Despite your gorgeousness, carrying you around for all these years has been tiresome. I am honoring you because tomorrow you will change. I won’t miss the pain but I will miss you. While some say my decision to alter you is anti-feminist, I see my decision as a way to take control over my body. I think that other people telling me what to do with my breasts is anti-feminist. My decision did not come lightly and it’s taken me years to come to this decision. Please know that this surgery is not happening because I hate you or because I hate my body. It’s quite the opposite. I’m coming at this with a lot of love. I hope to have less pain and hope to be more positively present in my body. Tomorrow you will have delicious scars — scars that will tell stories through the tips of my fingers. We will get to know each other all over again.
It’s been a blast. I look forward to getting to know the new us. Perhaps not better, but less painful. Bodies change. People change. Through all of the past and future changes, thank you for being a part of my gorgeous body.
Love,
Jenn
Jenn is a community builder, educator and activist who loves tap water, fresh air and radical self love.
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I related to this immediately. I, like many women, have always encumbered by my breasts. It’s just like the writer says, “It took a lot of work to carry you around.” I was able to empathize throughout, and although I have not had the same experience, I was touched by the writer’s plan for her surgery and the loss she knew she would feel once it was completed. Saying goodbye at the end was truly moving. Thank you.
~ Dorothy Rusoff
Juror's pick: Philip
This.
This is what I want.
To listen to you as you play songs on your father’s guitar – and sing you to sleep, to hear your voice every morning and every night, to hear the crackling of logs in the fire on the beach, your laughter and spend every day discovering new ways to bring joy, lightness and pleasure into your life, to learn to hear the tones in your voice, the spaces between the words, the music underneath them, to listen to the ‘sonic, hollow heavy’ in your heart and whisper to it of the beauty of its depth and rhythm as it weaves a beautiful chord of sweetgrass and sage between your magpie tail head and your cow-strap heart, to let your words soak into my skin and become a part of me, to listen as you read poetry to me for hours on end and to read you old stories from Scotland until your eyes are too heavy and you drift off into slumber filled with the most beautiful healing dreams.
To see your beautiful body, to observe your every movement, and let it teach me how to be, let it show me what you need and how to support you, to see the fluency of your hips and eyes, to watch your body as it goes through its cycles of shut down and opening up, to learn when to step back and when to move forward, to see your smile and your eyes soften as I find some new piece of beauty in you to appreciate, to see the ‘slobbering movement’ of your limbs and help you find your grace again, to see you weave yourself deep into your cocoon of distance and loss and breathe warm breaths onto it – marveling at what must be happening inside, to see you break into the widest smile as you learn a new chord I just taught you on guitar (a hard one like B7 . . .).
To feel your shifting moods and let each one – from the lightest to the darkest – show me how to stay deep in my heart and love you, to let myself be the ocean cliffs that your beautiful, wild and spiraling waves crash into but never budge – only slowly carve into more beautiful shapes, to feel your lips against mine as we wake up under the stars kissing before we’ve even woken up, to feel the fullness of your anger, displeasure and shut down and let it draw me deeper into my own integrity and groundedness, the weight of our backpacks on our backs as we travel to some place neither of us have been, to feel you crawl into bed and sleep with my breath helping you to breathe and my heart beat easing yours, and wonder what sort of dreams you are having and how I can make them more beautiful for you every night, to feel your sweat and saliva on my arms, lips, neck and ears as I walk through my day, to feel into your dark and mysterious corners, to feel your body as it opens under my hands as I massage you searching for tangles and webs with my fingers, to feel ourselves lying together in bed between freshly cleaned sheets just out of the dryer on a cold night.
To taste the mix of scotch and cigarettes in your mouth when we kiss, the incredible meals we create together and share with dear friends, the sweat from your body after a long night making love, unique foods in hole in the wall cafes in other cities (in other countries), to taste you and remind you that you are Earth as much as all the trees and grasses and rocks.
To smell the smoke on your clothes after a bonfire, the scent of a home full of dear friends after a potluck as we all linger lazily enjoying each other’s company late at night sharing stories and songs with each other, to smell the truth in your heart underneath all the caked layers and follow it to your center and rest there.
This is what I want . . .
To spend my days having you teach me – with your presence and your absence, your opening and closing, your coming to me and your pulling back – how to be present and how to say ‘yes’ to everything you offer me. To learn from you, everyday, a new way to penetrate the universe with my love. To be the keeper of your heart – responsible for filling it with honey (and water) every day, to bring you strength for every tomorrow. To find you when you are mute and numb. To feed your longing with beautiful words that lead you deeper and deeper into your
indigenous soul.
To go see Bon Iver perform live some day.
And, every night while you sleep, to whisper to your heart every good thing you have ever done, every good thing you have ever said, every gift you have ever given.
To spend time with your mother, listening to her stories and wisdom, talking with her about men and women, letting her into my life.
I want all of that. Unspeakably much.
I love you.
I want to spend a year and a day with you and watch how the seasons change you. Look on your face under every phase of the moon. Walk through valleys with you as branches let go of their leaves to lay you a beautiful carpet, and hear the birds sing love songs to you and tell you about the coming of winter – sing to you about the changing of the seasons, hear the wind (and even the mountains that you love so much) whisper to you about how everything changes . . . and then, every day,
show you the one thing that, stubbornly, refuses to change – my love for you.
That.
That is what I want.
Anonymous
I chose this piece as my favourite because it has all the ingredients for a great love letter. The language is rich and evocative: “To listen to the ‘sonic, hollow heavy’ in your heart”. Beautiful! It’s also unabashedly romantic: “To feel your lips against mine as we wake up under the stars kissing” – I love that. And, it’s visceral: “To feel your sweat and saliva on my arms, lips, neck and ears as I walk through my day” – that is so juicy (I want more of those days!).
The writer comes to this letter with honesty and an open heart: “To learn from you, everyday, a new way to penetrate the universe with my love” – breathtaking. I was swept off my feet. Now that’s a love letter.
~ Philip Hare
Juror's Pick: Sarah
I spent all day there on the dock at my nephew’s new cottage, doing not much of anything at all. I watched clouds slip across a clear blue sky, the kind of high slow-moving wispy clouds my dad called mare’s tails. I wrote. I read. I jumped in the water when I got too hot and laid on the weathered grey boards of the dock to dry off.
The sound of the wind in the white pines was punctuated by the clunk-slap of the little waves against your side. I spent the better part of an hour trying to describe that sound; clunk-slap seems the closest to it, but there’s a liquid gurgle to it that eludes my vocabulary.
I watched you bob on those little waves and thought about the email that my brother had sent the year before. “Headline: 50-year-old boat gets new home” read the subject line. All the email contained was 3 picture attachments of three generations of my family tooling around the lake in you. I remember smiling at the pictures and wishing that my dad was still around to see them.
You’re really not much, just a 12′ aluminium fishing boat. The years have not been kind to your looks. The brilliant turquoise paint has faded to a pale robin’s egg blue and the red feather logo is almost completely worn from the nameplate. The varnish on the three wooden benches is cracked and peeling. One of the “Proud Canadian” decals that Dad had stuck on each side had come off, the decals that came on the back of the Wiser’s Canadian Rye Whiskey bottles.
But that is just surface. You still float and the olive green 15hp Johnson motor clamped to the back wooden panel still starts in 3 pulls of the cord.
On a whim, I decided to take you out around the lake to explore. I almost wrenched something in my right shoulder from giving the cord too energetic a pull. I remembered doing that when Dad taught me how to run the boat, and a memory of him saying “take it easy, you’re not starting an airplane” made me mutter, “sorry Dad” before I remembered that he wasn’t there.
You started on the second pull, and I am so glad that there was no around to see me. I was grinning like a maniac, just like I had that summer when I was fourteen. Learning to operate you was my first taste of independence. My summer friend, Sandi, and I would roar out along the width and breadth of Whitestone Lake, white smiles flashing and brown hair whipped back by the maximum speed we could coax from the little outboard motor. We rushed to expand our boundaries, looking for secret places that we could pretend were ours and ours alone.
You were as responsive as you were on those long-passed summer days. I manoeuvred you from the dock without thinking about it, the act of accelerating and turning away from the shore performed by muscle memory. You sounded the same, and the second bench developed the same buzz at full throttle that would irritate Dad enough that he grumbled about it, but not enough so that he’d ever fix it.
As I drove you across the lake, I thought about you, the blue boat, as the touchstone you represent for our family. You’re such a small and simple object, yet you contain such memories. I shut off the motor in the middle of the lake and drifted, remembering Dad putting the worm on my fishing hook and what it felt like to catch my first fish. I remembered boat rides with my brother beside me on the front bench and our parents behind us, Mum playing I Spy With My Little Eye to entertain us when we got bored. I thought about the photos of you from every family summer vacation, pictures of a family growing up, growing older and expanding through children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
I eventually re-started you and headed back to the dock. Later that evening, I sat on the weathered grey boards of the dock, watched the clouds turn pink and orange in the sunset and listened to the clunk-slap against your aluminum frame and felt connected to my family in a way that I didn’t even know I’d been missing.
Kat Goodale is a martini-swilling, motorcycle-riding, poker-playing middle-aged broad who also teaches and acts as a role model for young ladies of refinement.
“You’re such a small and simple object, yet you contain such memories.” This line perfectly captures my adoration of this letter.
Such a small and simple snapshot, yet, it contains such memories. Memories line the page, memories of a boat (with “brilliant turquoise paint” that “has faded to pale robin’s egg blue”) memories of a late father, and memories of childhood. We travel back in time as we travel across the lake. We often say that memories lie in the details. This letter’s strength lies in the details, the “brown hair whipped back”, the “clunk slap of the little waves against your side” (“clunk-slap!” I love it!) the “pull” of the motor. What great verbs – whipped, punctuated, bob. We also learn about, “the kind of high slow-moving wispy clouds my dad called mare’s tails.” Thank you for sharing these details.
Last, using the blue boat as a frame and entry point to the letter provides such context, narrative, and richness. I love that the letter is addressed not to the writer’s late father, but to the boat. Using the pronoun “you” connotes the closeness of this relationship. This boat meant something big. Perhaps that it is for this reason that I love that last line the most: “Late that evening, I sat on the weathered grey boards of the dock, watched the clouds turn pink and orange in the sunset and listened to the clunk-slap against your aluminum frame and felt connected to my family in a way that I didn’t even know I’d been missing.”
Thank you for sharing your love! Clunk-slap!
~ Sarah Switzer
Juror's pick: Carrie
To The Prince of Greenwood Manor,
You are a jigsaw, you are my rickshaw. You are a friend on a seesaw, laughing and tilting . Laughing and tilting your head side to side as though you have water in your ears, talking nonsense, puzzling me and guiding me, a mystery and a mystic.
With your erudite lines and complicated numbers, you calculate me and draw me and infiltrate the lines on my forehead, no less! I have known your possibilities longer than I have known my own.
There was a time back in highschool – that nadir of existence if there ever was one – where I foresaw the exact date that the stars would align. That the star would shine like spring’s first daffodil in our garden on that expected date from that time in highschool – ooh, dreaded highschool – makes everything else fiction. And makes everything else correspond to your axis, to your plane of reference. I know that there are no other celestial bodies with your tilt.
There is nothing more soothing, nothing more soporific, than a thought or two of my lovelies. Indeed it is a trick of the brain, a firing of flowers in the synapses of my mind, that you calm my restless mind. At the very most those thoughts become my blood and my breath.
~ Your loving popi
Matthew Brejak writes, fathers, plays pingpong and studies baseball, all while delivering mail in Toronto, Ontario.
When I first read this poem, I scribbled in the margin: I want to get lost in these words. They’re fluttering and playful and a little like butterflies. I want to catch them in my net and watch them in a jar before letting them out into the sky again. Dear words, what do you mean? I love that we move from the tilt of a see-saw to the tilt of a celestial axis. I love that we’re in a park – an experience that is painted for me in the words the poet has chosen to describe the feeling of a park – and then, effortlessly, we’re up with the stars. We’re in thoughts and then in blood. There is magic in this Prince of Greenwood Manor. I loved everything about how it made me feel to read this love letter. And then loved it even more to learn after reading that this charming, mysterious, forehead line-penetrating Prince is the writer’s son. Oh, love!
~ Carrie Klassen
Juror's Pick: Salma
I know this letter is long-overdue. It’s been impossible not to notice that you have been sulking in a corner, wondering when I was ever going to smarten up and give you a little appreciation, a little recognition.
You’re right. And I am sorry. Very, very sorry.
I know I dump all kinds of disapproval and shame on you. I pick you apart and constantly divide you up into sheep and goats. Your eyebrows can go to the right hand of God, but your waistline is damned to hell. I’ve spent decades subjecting you to this kind of psychic butchery.
I’m amazed you’re not chock-full of resentment.
Or aches and pains.
Or cancer.
I think I would be, if I were you.
But although you’ve been bearing up remarkably well, I can tell that you’re fed up with me and my bullshit. Maybe you’re just an inch or two away from throwing a few things in a suitcase and scrawling a note to leave on the dresser: “I’m outta here, prick.”
Baby, don’t leave me.
Baby, I can change.
I see now how amazing you are. I glory in your strength and joy on the squash court, the way you still love to sprint for the streetcar. I appreciate your strong arms and back that delight in carrying tired children, stacking firewood, schlepping guitar and amp from gig to gig.
I love the trillion nerve endings of you that thrill to every breath of wind, each touch, the way you give hugs: strong, definite, enthusiastic and warm.
Where my heart is scarred and weary, you are alive and whole and complete. Your skin is smooth and healthy, your senses acute and agile. You glow. You shine. You sing.
The desperate, sharp edges reside elsewhere. They do not come from you. You are all innocent energy and joy. I believe you hold the power to redeem my broken heart and all of my cynicism.
We could make a great team. But I’ve been sabotaging you. I’ve been working you too hard. I’ve been taking you for granted.
Baby, if you’ll only stick around, things are going to be different.
I finally see what I have—and Baby, I love you. I want to grow old with you. Really, really old. Like, ancient.
I’m down on my knees here, Baby, making a solemn vow that the rest of our life together is going to be paradise for you. I’m going to tell you I love you every single day.
I’m going to give you room to breathe and time to relax.
No more picking at you. No more nagging and bitching. No more humiliation. And no more apologies.
You are the very best body I’ve ever had, or ever could have. I consider myself the luckiest woman in the world.
Please give me just one more chance, Baby, ‘cause this time, I’m going to treat you right.
Baby, let’s dance.
Anonymous
Thank you for writing this wonderful piece. You transformed my way of thinking about love letters. Why can’t we stop and write about parts of us that seem so hard to love? When your words fall on the page, I felt that you realized how much love you had to give to your body.
I loved the lines “divide you into sheep and goats”, ” I love the trillion nerve endings of you . . . ” I also love the gratefulness of the letter, the declaration of appreciation and the commitment to love yourself differently, hold yourself responsible and make change. Thank you for sharing this. It’s beauty inspires me to love myself differently and to write about parts of myself that I have a hard time loving. Now let’s all dance.
~ Salma Saadi
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This piece is just so deliciously self-full. Thank you for declaring your your sincerest apologies which bloom into deep appreciation and love! Your words paint such a perfect picture of the possibility of unconditional acceptance and desire. Thank you. My body just got an extra dose of loving kindness through your ode!
I truly thought that this was about, a child, or someone else that you love. I t wasn’t til about half way thru, that I realized what you were talking about. Maybe because I treat my body the same way. Thank you for a wonderful letter.