Love Letters
Josalyn H.
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TW: Self-harm, War, Death. This intimate collection of love letters to my three beloveds—my ancestry, my friends, my family. I explore how grief, frustration, anger, and confusion weave into the determination of love. Love coaxes brutality. But the gentleness of endearment never ceases. A Lesson in Pho tackles my love for the famous Vietnamese dish while coming to terms with its brutal history. I write dearly about my favorite dish while contrasting it with my family’s history with hunger and food. On Thunderstorms is a love letter to my friend and her worldview. During thunderstorms, she goes out in the rain to look for her neighbor's dog for hours just to make sure he had a dry place to wait out the storm. I wanted to capture her worldview and juxtapose it with people’s inability to understand her motives for running into the rain. Her delicacy in handling the old dog contrasts with the thunderstorm. To My Mother reflects my mixed feelings about my mother. Though I love her dearly, I harbor resentment for her. In this poem, I navigate the confusion behind wanting something more from her while recoiling from her touch. It's a stifling emotion with no name yet in this piece, I hoped to name it. Through my collection, Love Letters, I hope to navigate the nuance in not just love, but the complexities that love siphons.
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Creativity is more than just creation. It is the ability to manipulate words into images, feelings into objects, and tribulation into comprehension. Siphoning humanity from mundanity is the root of creation. Writing not only hones the incomprehensible, but forces an empathy to apathy only creativity can infuse.
