Poetry Corner 1 Last Letters Gone are those hours on the patio with pen and pastel stationery, printed with a border with faux embroidery and matching envelopes, pens with ink drawn up from a bottle in navy or indigo, words flowing full of mixed feelings across miles to reach Diana in New York from my apartment in Florida. Gone are the shoeboxes of refolded letters tied and saved with ribbon or strip of scrap fabric preserving detailed tales of discos and dinner dates with men I never saw again, encounters delivered with suspense, revelation when you turned the page – He was a priest! – chronicles of the crazy supervisor who insisted I sing with him, and a shrink who told me secrets of his other patients because I was special. Letters with the day and date, names of impending hurricanes, lists of books read and fish caught, what I’d cooked for dinner for ten or gulped alone in front of the TV. I saved letters written by the boy who would be my husband, his boyish scrawl from summer ‘65, when he lived in Utica with family, and I was at the summer bungalow with Mother, where I wrote on my lap, on stone steps still warm from the day, letters filled with love and longing, something to hold onto. By Joan Mazza. Joan has worked as a medical microbiologist and psychotherapist, and taught workshops focused on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self. Her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Adanna Literary Journal, Poet Lore, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia. Her website is here.
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