I long for letters I didn’t save or receive,
letters I hoped to read in my old age.
A collection of one-hundred and seventy-six
love letters between the Brownings
and those of Virginia and Vita
leads me to look through my own.
My folder
is thin, contains few love letters; nothing poetic.
An unexpected letter from a college friend
sent to Iran after our graduation,
Must we deny the possibility of a future?
Why did he wait until I was gone?
A postcard from a man I loved
for many years:
Je pense à ton sourire jour et nuit.
There must be love in letters
from my former husband, and possibly
from someone I have forgotten.
How did I decide what to toss or keep?
Why did I save only this one
from my beloved father?
glad it was not my hand, but my leg, not right, but left.
What happened to his poem of longing
for children he sent abroad, seeing them
only in summertime?
Confined to other people’s love
I reach for the volume of letters
between Virginia and Vita:
“I am settling down to wanting you,
doggedly,
dismally,
faithfully”
and see my own name, Vida, transformed.