A letter in which the author proclaims their undying love, or perhaps their infatuation or general horniness, as relates to the intended recipient.

Lines from love letters I've written and saved from 1993 to the present. My first attempt at a cut-up.

READ ME FIRST
Dear dear friend
like me, only good in person
this is what I'd be whispering
sweet-spirited and written in contagious rambling style
Forgive me for making so little sense.
it's so much easier to write when you're giddy than to talk
No, I really did just sigh.
Your corduroy and guttural speech endear me
pretty, how lucky I find your eyes and name
I'm enough for you. Which is pathetic.
lucky; slashing imaginary hearts with a Bic
and filling my diary with hormone-dripping tripe.
I've started to dot my i's with hearts.
I am alive, and I make estrogen.
Did you get my Christmas card? My numerous e-mails?
Do you realize that if it were convenient I would stalk you?

my first kiss died in July, disconnected. Painkillers.
looks like you.
And I'm going to kill my father.
This is what I am doing with the silence: letting go.
Pages in my journal, taking long walks and drinking a lot of green tea.
It's a solution.
it's actually not the worst part.
He's very well-spoken + brave.
Yelling at me and telling me to go away
He is a secret, superior twin to me. He dances. I do (in my bedroom).
boo hiss sob sob sob
I was not the last.

I thought of you all day ... really.
Dead and rigor mortised and necrophiled and beaten horses, etc.
He loves me, he loves me not, mu.
My feet stuck out from under my blanket, I got rained on.
Light & misty and I had to call.
So I'm full of bubbles if you needed to know, which you probably don't.
It's been like ages. You were supposed to call me last night and you know you didn't.
I don't know what else to do.
I've constructed force fields:
The most that will happen is an impassioned CLANK! if we meet. Maybe nothing at all.

A part of me was getting sick.
Lies, and I knew it. I assume you were hurt.
Honey, someday you'll see me.
I was only kidding. I am moody, unstable, immature.
I want your words. Forgiveness. Friendship. But only if you want to give.
You are the best kisser I know. My body felt heavy in flight.
Now you know this is a love letter. But maybe you do that too.
Maybe I invented you.

I am still alive and well on the Western Hemisphere (the dancin'-est hemisphere of all!).
And I'm gonna read Emerson too.
I dreamt that one of my cats was smoking.
I need I need
A fix like cigarettes
this addiction I can't identify or satisfy

A -14-year-old boy said, "I love you." It was hilarious. It fucking made my day. Fucking splendid.
Dream guy. And raising his brows. Yeah!
Maybe it really is over, permanent and broken.
played Truth or Dare with boys
I worry about postal workers and parents
my mother in the garden
grow, prune, grow -- or something
I worry about it and I don't worry about it.
We left yesterday morning and I still hadn't gotten your letter yet.

Are our microtransmitters tuned to the same station, or what?
You have
a gorgeous time spraining your toe and falling in love.
Lucky devil.
I wanna see your bad handwriting!
I had a dream about you. You had your own private trash can!
I swooned, but I'm always doing that. I'm only flunking one of my classes this term.
Have a happy! Call and let me know who you are now.
Peace/love + grilled cheese.

XOXO,
Yours truly

... if you were Jewish and we lived in Germany in Hitler's day, i would hide you in my attic and we would have picnics in the dark and dream about the day we could roam the streets, arm in arm, drinking beer and eating blood sausage...

... if you lived in Australia when the first settlers arrived, and you were an Aborigine and i was an English settler's daughter, i would have warned you of the genocide that was to come. i would have brought you food and love and done all i could to stop the pain...

...if a madman burst into the house tomorrow and said that one of us had to be killed, i would jump in front of his gun and gladly let myself die so you wouldn't be hurt at all...

...but then again, i know you wouldn't want to live without me, so maybe you could stand in front of the madman's bullet with me...

...and then maybe you'd die but i'd only be injured, and then i'd have to kill myself for obvious reasons...

...but i'd much prefer to be eating blood sausage and bratwurst and be drinking beer on the streets of Germany with you, of course...

I love you, baby

This poem, by Spike Milligan, was one which I came across by chance, at the age of fourteen. I'd always liked poetry, but this was the first poem I ever read that burned itself so deep into my brain the instant I read it that I knew I would never forget it. It just felt like utter truth, beautifully expressed to me then, and it remains my favourite love poem. It goes like this:

If I could write words
Like leaves on an autumn forest floor
What a bonfire my letters would make.

If I could speak words of water
You would drown when I said
"I love you".

Hey there, City Mouse!

...This is the third time I've tried to draft this letter. That's not only because after a page or so my handwriting gives in to illegibility, but because I keep on thinking new things I want to say (of course my own inadequacy at simply saying things tends to be problematic, too.) Letters, I find, are scary things because they seem so final and committed -- Can't delete the last paragraph and reword it. There's no turning back - only starting over. And at times the words come out like bad teenage poetry. And that's an issue because it makes me realize that I'm just a bad teenage poet who hates starting over.

Thursday night I managed to rediscover my insomniatic groove... watched shitty late-nite tv and thought about you 'till I finally managed to fall asleep. I like to think that insomnia is the product of spending lonely nights in bed, without someone to hug and remind that everything's ok. Maybe that's me being silly and overemotional and a little bit lovesick, but that's the only answer that comes to mind when I ask myself why I can never sleep at home.

"How sweet. ...but why are you writing this letter?"

Well, I thanked your parents, but I never thanked you. Never properly, at least. Never for everything.

Thank you for inviting me to your city, into your house, into your life. Thank you for being you. Thank you for us.

Seeing you last week made me start to understand an awful lot of things... How incredibly lucky I am to have met you in a world filled with so many people. How fortunate I am to have found someone who makes me feel special. Someone who asks me to be their boyfriend forever. When I'm around you there are no pretenses -- I feel safe and I feel understood.

Remember that party, where that girl walked up to us and commented on "how incredibly happy we look together"? I've been thinking about that a lot.

You know something that kept me going last year? The way we parted ways after classes together. We'd say goodbye, smile awkwardly, and turn away.

We'd always glance back and smile again.


A few years ago, I thought I had fallen in love with someone. Only in the past few months have I started to understand what falling in love really feels like. Every time I'm with you, the world starts to make more sense. You answer my questions. You've made me start to discover myself. You make me stop worrying about the future.

What could be wrong with the future if the present is so damn good?

I think it's fairly obvious why this is my third try at writing this note. It's hard to translate emotion to words, especially when it feels as though you're still learning both languages involved. I know that after a few lines I sound like a smitten heartstruck who's bad at expressing himself.

But then maybe that's what I am.
Thank you for seeing past that.

Julia, I am truly, madly, deeply in love with you.

And I wouldn't say that if I didn't mean it.


Just thought you should know.

Yours,
Thom.