Poetic Letters Across a Pandemic Distance

After reading the poetic correspondence between Natalie Diaz and Ada Limón entitled “Envelopes of Air,” we decided to write poetic letters to one another, which naturally interrogated our feelings and thoughts during a pandemic. We met through the Girls Write Now program, with Emma, a high school junior based in the Bronx, New York, participating as a mentee, and Robin Messing, a writer based in Brooklyn, working as a mentor.

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Masking & Unmasking
Robin to Emma

I’ve lived long & I can recall so much, yet some of the most crucial
moments are lost to me. Recollections aside, I’ve decided

not to hide anymore.

I mean shame. I mean rage. I mean loneliness. In a plague
the past feels present, the future eclipsed, the carnage

unfathomable.

Sirens have subsided & death
resumes elsewhere. Fall

has never been more beautiful

now that I’m married to gingkos, elms, & oaks.
I wonder what your youth

makes of isolation. In my early years

I refused to know what I knew. I wonder what
your loneliness might say. Snow

is on the way. I hope it will feel

like patience, that its silence will be soothing,
not a reminder of the cruelty

of power’s inaction. Sometimes I wish

there were words for everything. Dread
isn’t exactly right. Pleasure isn’t sufficient.

I’m finding new ways to say

gentle, tender, helpless,
to free them from captivity.

Hiding in Plain Sight Like the Wind or a Leaf Stuck to the Sidewalk
Emma to Robin

I need the burning brightness of fresh air.

I don’t know if I’m lonely.

Like this past summer I was
scrambling for words and

I felt inadequate, in my longing,
but there was youth.

Fun from a distance.

Up close there’s the
tear-burning torture of everything

Being Dramatic.
doyouremember?

I liked the way the snow shoved cold down my
throat.

Made me feel solitary in good company.

and the island I’m on blows salt towards me
through me
asking me to inhale

I don’t want to be hiding
either

but the salt wind hides in crevasses

To inhale something that hides
is an action of loving.

In The Wake of Immobility
Robin to Emma

I walk to the park every day now
a wedge against every repressed desire

for flight

inaction terrifies me sloth
an enslavement a knot

in a tree’s heart

each twisted part craves
embrace each shame like your salt wind

meant for movement

& visibility I remember riding
my ten speed over asphalt feeling

myself fleeing

when I couldn’t sense any other way
I finally understand the privilege

in motion you remind me

to love the paralysis of my past
that stasis can be bravery

as we wait

for this plague
to end

Me in the Context of Who I Was and Have Been Being
Emma to Robin

In a way it would be easier if
“the plague is upon us!”

Bell clappers against strike points.

Then we could scream to no end.
Scream ourselves hoarse.

I don’t want to seem ungrateful for
the white sterility of
the walls of my room.

But I guess I am.

I want to feel
movingsofast that motion is vibration.

Privilege in motion and immobility, where does it end?
Would it help to pound the pavement

with running feet?

I used to go barefoot everywhere.
Now my feet are calloused for no reason.

Why be calloused for wood floors?

I’m remembering the joy of flip-flops in rain.
Droplets warm and juicy.
Headphones sheltered under sheaves of hair.
Laughing by myself.

I seldom laugh by myself.
If you can make yourself laugh,
you are lucky.

There’s a song called “The Waiting.”
I am “The Waiting.”

In Which I Try to Answer When There Are No Answers
Robin to Emma

Is it possible to make
our own luck? A laugh

hidden

like the sun’s
presence even

in darkness?

I’ve witnessed more than one
personal plague

there was no returning from.

Sometimes sky or bush
makes being human

bearable.

Pam H once asked: Can the Earth
give back what was taken

from me? Terror

the friend that never exits.
Drawn to gloom

as if to flame. I see that
hiding can be useful—

wintering birds

the same shade
as bark

imperceptible

if not for my attention.
Isn’t awareness

one of the gifts

of being
with oneself?

Distortion of Reality Comes Easily Like a Wave or Exhale
Emma to Robin

Looking out the window

it could be
a moving picture
glued to the other side of the glass.

Who’s to say?

How long of never-being-outside would
it take for me to believe
this is the only world that
Exists?

Once I was trapped in a bathroom for
Thirty minutes?
Forty minutes?
Could it have been an hour?

It didn’t take long to start
trying to leave
by impossible means.

Before I yelled out I closed my eyes and
moved myself through the door.

I would go crazy sofast.

At what point are there no backsies?
I think never.
I think that we are never broken.

I’m going to be the cardinal in the snow.
If I can bear it.

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From Girls Write Now Unmuted: The 2021 Anthology, published by Dutton and Feminist Press. A public launch party for the e-book will take place on June 18 at 6 pm; you can register here.