Dearest,
I have read leatherbound anthologies in the lounges of great libraries and stoic academic buildings. Surrounded by the faint smell of coffee drifting across waves of old wood and tired lacquers, I have poured over the language of the ancients, the classics, and the poets of ages past and nearly present. The edges of each page have been softened with years of use and years of neglect, but the words anchor the paper into the bindings as firm as the day they were printed. The poems’ echoes reverberate and unite tired strains into new songs for those who crack open the leaves of these passing odes, sonnets, and epics.
I search, look high and low. I illuminate the forgotten nooks of literature sure that my prize will yet be found. The vastness of tall shelves and thick volumes makes probable the hitherto impossible. Yet many years have and many years still may not succeed in the finding. I am sorry to say that it is quite likely that no poet has ever employed his craft for you.
You see, your love and your beauty were not made for verse. The rhythm of your body and the rhyme of your heart and the meter of your life lie imperfectly on paper. The corners of your song lift off the sheet and are brushed back at the softest touch. The whole peels off and falls to the ground with the next. The notes do not dance, and the lyrics do not skip. They have fallen, dead before the end of their descent.
A mother’s love is too specific for poetry. It cannot be generalized and certainly never published. The mass of its affection is too cumbersome for the masses. The object of its emotion can be none but himself. The love for your son is yours alone. But its weight may be mine: the seed of a reciprocation. A reciprocation of a love not mine to requite. A love that is so deeply unlike the attentions of the spritely maids for whom the bards croon. Yours is not a song to be sung, but to be remembered, cherished, stored in the annals of the heart.
Likewise, your beauty lives on, far from the brush strokes of those great masters who painted their brides with language and color that eclipse rainbows. They remain mum on the subtleties of your grace. In the haze of their long lost days they cannot see the details when your fingers push the curve of your hair away from your eyes. Uncut, polished nails crest out of those dark, falling strands. And the ancients do not know how the same similarly move across the keys they know so well. Your trained fingertips smooth over the ebony locks and sing in harmony with your cherry lips. Those lips shift effortlessly between song and smile like the shimmering of a northern lake, a promise of peace.
So while none compose a song for you, you sing your own, independent and unbearably lovely. I would sing along too if I but knew the words. Of course, the knowing of your lyrics would not soften my unsteady voice nor would it sharpen my quiet quill. Every line would be smudged and choked with imperfection. For the sake of justice, for your song, I mute the yearning to put my words to the music of your life.
I must ask you not to doubt the sincerity of this letter because of my reticence. The profundity of your elegance is manifest in all: the twitch of your brow, the angling of your thumb, the hum of your grin. And though others may not see these, less sing of you, there is no thing more clearly imbued with the heavenly graces. Yet to take me at my word is to ignore my silent song, so no one will blame you when you sincerely doubt the contents herein.
Yours truly,
Yours evidently,
Yours,
The End.