LOVE LETTERS - My Mother's Lips

LOVE LETTERS - My Mother Lips

World War II



It all began one late afternoon
in October - my Father
handed me a stack of letters,
“For the stamps,” he said.

Well,
I knew different as I reached
out - touched his letters.

Father continued to point toward
stamps, repeating how valuable
they may be.

I never collected stamps but
I am a writer –

I retire early in the evening
turn on my television, switch
a bedside lamp on low, pretend
to listen to “Criminal Minds” only
to fall asleep before the criminal
is captured.

I stacked some of the letters
inside a drawer of my bed side
table – near me – for the first
time, love letters from parents –

I would hear for the first time
the love between my mother
and father -

My heart began to beat strange –
like those times I thought I really
loved someone for the first time?

Then I recognized saying from my
life, familiar things said between
my Mother and Father –

I began to want to read more – in
order since every single envelope
was kept, in order, in perfect piles.

A smile covered my face,
no one would see it, but I knew it,
I even heard myself giggle.
Mother, she always wanted to
squeeze Father – and all those
X’s and O’s – and even lip’s – my
mother’s lips kissed paper, and she
has been dead for so long.

Between letters I repositioned myself
my leg moving nervously about
as I lived their world, felt their fear,
love, desperation, and dreams.

Nothing could be better,
nothing could compare to this night.
My mother said, “One day we may have
a little girl, and when she’s grown she
may want to read all we have said.”

Mother died far too young, but
I recall all her words, and now
in black and white – as I neatly
fold them back inside an envelope
with special stamps.

Nancy Duci Denofio
all rights reserved
@2011