Letters to Saudade

[letterstosaudade]

To a poet with love

Dear J, I know I am not in your poetic consciousness or in your dreams but you are in mine, constantly day after day. The first time I heard your name was when I was teaching at the University of Utah and one of my students mentioned Rupi kaur and then somebody took your name. She read out one of your poems. I smiled. I was intrigued and I found a poem of yours in a literary journal. There was a picture of you in something blue, a boat neck blouse, a pastel paisley patterned shawl on one shoulder, the soft curve of your shoulder was as enticing as your face with its soft soothing smile and the most beautiful raven black eyes. I couldn’t take my eyes off your face. I was bewitched and I started reading your work and with every poem you possessed me. After a long time, I felt I had found a woman of my dreams. I had been so hurt in my marriage that I thought I would not be able to live to see another day. When the nightmare ended, another began and I had found myself in Rockland Psychiatric Centre. It was a long journey and I could never trust anybody ever again. When I started reading your poems, an invisible thread started connecting me to you. I fell in love with you. Who would not, your soul wept in all your poems. I immediately knew you were suffering like me. Every time I got back from the university, I imagined you opening the door of my house, taking me in your arms and kissing me the way I had never been kissed before, with love. I imagined myself kissing your soft shoulder and your neck. I imagined cold winter evenings with my head in your lap as I read a book and you sipped tea quietly by the fireside, sometimes reading a poem to me. Then I found you on Facebook! You seemed to know a lot of my writer friends. You honored me with your friendship. It was unbelievable. I spent hours looking at your pictures. I could never say anything to you. I was too afraid of rejection. You were always sensitive and polite. I thought you had a soft corner for me. Then I saw that another man was head in heels in love with you. He loved you like a madman, like a sailor who had seen land after a long time and you reciprocated with equal ardor and passion. I was shattered. You were dedicating poems to him. I started feeling I was back in Rockland again. Then there was a long silence. One winter evening, I saw that you had written another collection of poems. It was for Him. Him. Of course I ordered it. I read it. I know my heart hurts but it also says that a love like yours can light up the universe. I love you in a way that sunflowers love the sun and I love you even more for loving for the sake of love. Even if it’s not me and the sea of disappointment comes over me, but a love like yours spells eternity. Thank you poet for your poetry. I now understand love. Yours in verse. J

[letterstosaudade]

For years I have let a completely charming and brilliant artist intimudate me, gaslight me and drag me through emotional abuse. I never told him when he hurt me because I was afraid of his anger, his judgment of me, afraid I would not be able to argue my point. For years I manipulated myself into self-blame. Crying, I prayed for my freedom but couldn't see the door. I have never told anyone. Everyone thinks we're great friends, that I'm strong and successful. But I'm crumbling.

[letterstosaudade]

he has never hugged me. in 25 years. not when I fell while running to open his car door when I was 5. not when I was hospitalized for cutting open my wrists. am his only son and am always told I need to be tough coz am weak and world doesn't like weak men. coz I cry easily. I dont want to be tough. I want to be soft and kind. I want to tell him that being kind is more important that being a "man". they aren't mutually separate.

[letterstosaudade]

These days are happy and I know that I am not the reason for it. I don't want to know the reason. I just want her to be close and happy. When she disappears for hours on the weekend, I clean the shelves and spend time with the dogs. I tell myself it is ok. As long as she comes back happy and the happiness touches me a little also. Sometimes I think I am pathetic but mostly it just lets me live another day.

[letterstosaudade]

I have been throwing my meds away. My wife doesn't know. I am tired of being numb. I would rather feel the pain of depression than not feel anything.

[letterstosaudade]

To Saudade, to myself

To Saudade, to myself,

Sau d a  d    e                       the name already rolls unfamiliarly on my tongue. How did you become so divorced from yourself? 

Him.             I don't know how to wash myself of memories of him. Turned against myself, each day is winter as I gaze upon myself from under my tomb, harsh, bitter cold ravaging my insides while my skin glows. I am already my own ghost, addressing myself in you, Saudade, hoping you will be my friend again. Will you forgive me, will summer come again? 

            dearest saudade, how could you fail me, how could you turn away from the lies? I lay there for so many lifetimes, preserved perfectly, cauterized in my pain, as he devoured my bones. How could you leave me, my beloved, to be plucked apart by vultures and men who feasted on my skin? Where did you go, even now these words are thrown into the void with deep faith that you will hear them someday. 

I cannot find you anymore, even though you are sitting beside me, our bodies touching in a way that remind me of the days when I could not tell where you began and I ended. I am all but empty, a tiny bird held together by air but your absence does not let me breathe. Come back, dear Saudade, so I may recognize you once again, scream at you before violently making love. Who knows what it will mean when I claw at your spine, passion or hate? All I know is I never want to let you go. Stay, please, remain with me Saudade, lest I forget to survive.

Saudade thenamealreadyrollsunfamiliarlyonmytongue. 

[letterstosaudade]

I want to believe that I am stronger than my disease.

[letterstosaudade]

I write to you today to ask for something, and I hope that I have earned the right to ask this forthrightly from you.What I want is this- I want you to let go. Forget me.. I want that you should relinquish your hold on me so that I can start picking up my pieces, spit gluing them together and move on with a clean slate. You know about my feelings for you and I hope that you understand that they will never change. I will always hold you in the same high regard as I have in the past two decades.

[letterstosaudade]

today I find myself writing to you again, same as our younger years. I guess I've reached the level of introversion where i feel the need to put down my thoughts in solitude later, lest they disturb the actual event. you will please appreciate that the following thoughts have taken an enormous amount of effort for me to put down on paper because the matter at hand is so tenuous. You came here the other day and you achieved pretty much all that you had set out to do- which was primarily providing much needed face time, explaining your stand to me, proving to me that my decision to leave was rash and generally making me feel very good about myself- inside and outside. I think it was a successful day for you in that sense- but not for me. I felt a little niggling sense of things not quite lining up, and I didn't understand why until much later.Now, if we put all the eloquent words and the bells and whistles aside. I couldn't help but notice that there was a distinct undercurrent of unease inside of you. your energies were all over the place- I mean you're generally very self assured, and were this time too, but it was almost like there was a dark curtain inside of you hiding something you didn't want to share with me for whatever reason.There was a lot of posturing in your words and in your actions.. they were almost theatrical, and 'designed' to make me happy in the shortest, most effective way possible. As if you were the ringmaster and i was the lion to be tamed? I could also sense a bit of darkness.. like you didn't want to be here. the slightest undercurrent of something basal.. fear maybe? what are you battling inside that is turning out all the lights inside of you? what storms are brewing inside of you? you seemed like you were walking on a thin, taut line with danger on either side.I don't intend to paint you into a corner with all this, and you certainly don't owe me an explanation for any of it. I thought about letting it go, because everyone is entitled to their own privacy, but I couldn't help atleast acknowledging it, because what kind of friend am I otherwise? Besides, I simply cant bear the thought of you being in distress and me not doing anything about it.I will just leave you to it after saying the following: hey, it's only me. I'm the same person I've been for the last several years, and I know you inside and out. I'm still attached to you emotionally and feel your pain and your joys. Whatever load you're carrying, if you'd like to carry it alone, please do. But atleast know that I know, I commiserate, and that I will hold your hand while you carry it. I'm here to stand with you in whatever you may choose to do. And if you ever want to talk about it, I promise never to be critical.. only to provide empathy and support.Know that you never have to make any efforts with me. Had I known that you were going through something somewhat dark yourself, I would never ever have tried to lean on you. You don't have to posture to make me happy. I derive my happiness from very simple things.. like the sound of your voice, or the fact that I got to make you a sandwich. If you painted this white, then let it be the sanctuary where you come to put down our guard. not raise it higher.

Submitted via email

[letterstosaudade]

How many times will I wake up from the same dream before I admit that you were my first love? Before I own to wanting you beyond lips and hands, to buckling when you walked away — because I asked, because I pushed and walled. This was, what, five years ago? And still the edges of it fizzle and cringe. I lose sleep tracing a labyrinth of wrong turns.

I hate to admit I spent the first surplus on you, on trying to teach you meaning beyond cyphers. But I did. I did. I swelled with a jealous love and you tasted only the leaks, the spills.

[letterstosaudade]

I was too much for you- too loving, too talkative, to adventurous, too wild. You were too little for me- no heart, no spirit, no passion, no goals. I learned my lesson, I shouldn't ever have to fill in the gaps left by someone not capable of being my equal. Looking back, I wanted to open your eyes, but you wanted to keep them closed.

[letterstosaudade]

What has gone Unsaid in your life?

Who or what do you love, miss, need, lose, accept, cherish, detest, need to forget, forgive, apologize to, heal with?

With words we birth. With words we bury. 

What words are swimming in the deep seas of your mind?

Share it with us. ( Submit or Send them via our askbox)

All submissions are posted anonymously.

Write your unsaid..

[letterstosaudade]

Today I cried because one of my favourite feminist writers things my identity is not as valid as hers because I wasn't *born* a woman.

[letterstosaudade]

I love her. I can never have her.

[letterstosaudade]

he hurt me for 20 years. i didn't tell anyone.

[letterstosaudade]

Today I met my biological mother. I waited 5 years to do this. I had imagined it would hold the key to so many questions within me but all I got was an hour, 1 coffee and some casual conversation with a complete stranger.

[letterstosaudade]

To my dearest Saudade, at last:

Oh, Saudade. In the first place, how are you? I hope that you are well, and I hope that you can say that with a lightness in your eyes. For too long, it seems, you went through the motions, telling me things were lovely when they were not. I have never quite been able to square your general directness with your inability to speak up when something does not feel right. I hope you have found a way to be open, at least with one person, and to understand that sharing burdens is what people in love do. Love means not facing life alone.

Do you actually believe that I have abandoned you, or are you willing yourself to believe that, in the hopes it will make our parting easier? I doubt that is a question you can answer. But I have not. I have not now, nor will I ever abandon you, Saudade––although we may be working with different criteria of abandonment. In any event, I was not the one who made the choice to give up. I was not the one who decided that you were not worth it, whatever exactly "it" might be.

Of course, everything was lovely in the beginning. The beginnings of things always are. The problem is that we too easily forget that people's lives are full of mundanities that do not serve any real purpose to their narrative. It is those mundanities to which we must adapt. It is those mundanities we must understand, because a person's humanity lies there, not in the highlight reel. Once you live with someone, you get to see and experience them when they are no longer putting on a show for you. You get that privilege because they trust you enough to let you in, to allow you to see them for who they really are.

I am not sure what sacrifices you feel you made, Saudade. I certainly was not privy to any of them, and you gave me neither understanding nor even passing glimpse of the pressure you most assuredly thought you were under. I hope, dear Saudade, that you did not and do not believe that pressure came from me, for I am far from the demanding sort. To the extent that you did make sacrifices, why blame me for those decisions when I remained blissfully unaware that you were giving anything up at all? It seems recursive, knowing what I do about your past, and more than a little spiteful. But I can forgive you for that.

I can forgive you for most anything, Saudade. The only thing I cannot forgive you for is withholding your thoughts because you believed you were capable of coming to a decision that affected both of us on your own, without seeking my counsel. That is not partnership, Saudade. It occurs to me that you actually had made the decision to tear the concept of "us" asunder from the moment you chose to keep your own counsel. And so, my hope for you is that you will come out of this with a better understanding of what you can, and should, expect from a future partner. Partnerships are not built of eggshells and silence, Saudade. They are built of sharing and spines. Pray grow one.

Perhaps someday you will miss me, and all that we could have become. I will smile, knowing that day is too late and past the point.