womanhood

The Elpis Letters #5 | 16 by Writing to Breathe

16

16 year old me.

Please.

Know your worth.

Trust your instincts.

Hug your parents. Tight.

Apologise quickly.

Stand strong in your beliefs.

Appreciate true friendship.

Find the good in others.

Defend that girl.

That boy isn’t forever.

The pain is temporary.

The hurt will heal.

Find your passion.

Savour the good times.

Laugh immensely.

You will learn as you grow.

You will grow as you learn.

You will look back some day.

Your why’s will be answered.

In the meantime.

Please.

Love yourself.

Trust the journey.

~ Writing Breathe, B.P


About writing to breathe

Writing to Breathe (she/her) is thirty-five years old with a two-year-old and a one-year-old to keep her busy. She recently decided to leave the corporate world behind to focus on what she truly enjoys: writing! Although poetry is her main passion right now, Writing to Breathe is looking to delve into all types, and has started a Creative Writing course to help her master it. You can follow her writing journey on Instagram @Writing_to_breathe_ and on Facebook @WritingToBreathe.

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The Elpis Letters #4 | Blue Glitter by Robin Kinzer

Content warNing: SELF-HARM

Dearest S.,

Do you remember the blue glitter? I will never again be able to walk through a craft store’s glitter aisle, without grateful tears burning the corners of my eyes. Sun-sparkles blurring my vision. 

We were sixteen and seventeen, precisely eleven months apart in age, and I sent you an envelope full of glitter in the mail. I have to assume a love letter was included as well— I was known for fifteen page, blissed out missives. Shortly after I sent the blue glitter, life turned particularly desperate for you, burning your tender nerves more than they could take. You cracked an x-acto blade open, dagger spit forth from bright orange sheath. You sobbed, holding it to your left wrist. You pressed the aluminum shark’s tooth into your wrist’s pale flesh— practicing— dragged it lightly across your skin, a thin red line left behind.

Then, an act of the divine, an act of chance that’s enough to set teeth chattering. The envelope I’d recently sent came spilling down from the shelf above, blue glitter exploding onto your palms, your thighs, your knees. You pressed your hands to your tear-streaked face, turned even your cherub cheeks into sparkling blue.

Robin, you thought then. Robin. And that was it. You could not leave me. That’s how you always told the story. You clicked the aluminum dagger back into its sheath, away, away from your slender, precious wrists.

Somehow, it’s now twenty-five years later, and you are still my favorite person in the world. And I’m sick again, only it could be fatal this time, not just excruciating. You write every day, tell me about your new plants, your dissertation, your nieces. You send postcards in the mail, made from giant puzzle pieces— sea creatures on the front, your swoop-swirl handwriting on the back. I send postcards to you and your nieces, flower faeries and dancing sprites to remind them to dream.

Today, I dissected my apartment, portioning its contents out to the people I love. I wish someone had told me to write my Last Will and Testament when I was healthy, because writing it while sick is just scary. Just blisteringly sad. I’m curled turtle in bed when you write and say: The idea of having your physical stuff with me, if I can no longer have physical you, makes me very happy. I’m so glad to be in this messy life with you. 

I’m reminded of being eighteen and sick, endometriosis still years from diagnosis. We were rained out of our tent at a folk festival in Hillsdale, New York, clothes soggy, hair curling like untamed grapevines in the damp. That night, my abdominal pain put on a horror show, and with nowhere else to go, we slept cramped into my sister’s boyfriend’s car. I will never forget letting you run your silvered fingers over the hot throb of my abdomen. A place I never let anyone touch. Ever.

You sang to me then, something mellifluous and sweet, a love song you’d written about us. The pain still pulsated, but it also lifted just a bit, carried away by the sound of your voice floating into the star-splattered skies above us.

This messy life, indeed. I have loved you for twenty-six years, and whether I have five years left or fifty, I will love you for every second left to us. Today, I told my best friend I’d been lucky enough to have two great loves, and because of this, would be okay if I never had another. 

It is hard to need more when I already have so much. It is hard to need more when I am so saturated with love that it spills out of me like sunlight sometimes, bits of gleam pouring to the floor the second I open my mouth.

Love spills out of me like sprays of blue glitter falling to the floor, blue glitter ensuring I can write this letter to you over twenty years later, ensuring you will be there to receive it.

Lucky is a pitiful word when it comes to you and I— too small, too simple. I don’t think the word to describe our love has yet been invented, though a few come to mind. There is numinous. There is luminescent. Sublime.

There is so much left to say. So many words to be written, found, cherished. I still imagine us drinking lemonade on a porch in our eighties, rocking on a swing that glides with the ease of a sparrow’s flight. I refuse to stop believing in that future, in a bower of purple geraniums growing above us as we rock back and forth on that porch swing, so happy. So old.

I still believe. I still believe my love for you is enough to keep me alive.

Yours,

R.


ABOUT robin kinzer

Robin Kinzer (she / her) is a queer, disabled poet and sometimes memoirist. She was once a communist beaver in a PBS documentary. She previously studied psychology and poetry at Sarah Lawrence and Goucher Colleges, and is now an MFA candidate at University of Baltimore. Robin has poems recently published, or shortly forthcoming in Little Patuxent Review, Wrongdoing Magazine, Gutslut Press, Fifth Wheel Press, Corporeal Lit, Defunkt Magazine, and others. She loves glitter, Ferris wheels, and waterfalls. She can be found on Twitter at @RobinAKinzer

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The Elpis Letters #3 | Ctrl Alt Del Black Woman by Mo

The women I know used to shrink all the time,

Now, we bare our teeth,

drink the blood of our enemies,

after all anything that bleeds be unholy,

ain’t that why you call us witches?

Call us hysterical,

Call me bitch,

Bitch please.

I could swallow you whole in one bite and use your bones to pick my teeth when I’m finished.

Boy, I birthed you;

Don’t you ever disrespect your mother.

And yeah, Crystal, you were right.

Every time I walk into a room,

my black goes before me, while my woman sits in the back where she will neither be seen nor heard.

Sometimes my woman walks into the room before me, and locks my Black out because my black is too black, and the only black in the room, and my woman can not afford to be the stereotype,

even though she be angry,

even though she be right,

even though she be backbone,

even though she is too much of all to only be one,

and still she be forced to choose,

like you can separate one from the other when you are the bastard child of bondage.

My woman closes the door on my black.

My black closes the door on my woman.

My woman and my black fight every single day.

My woman, and my black be tired.

My woman and my black be so tired, cus she be everything to everybody and don’t get none of the credit for everything she gives.

And she gives,

and gives,

and gives,

till she can’t give no more, and then she gives again.

She be the meat, the bone and the marrow.

She be the cook, the pot and everything in the pot,

and still have to clean up everyone else’s mess.

And maybe that comes with the territory.

Perhaps Medusa was a black woman,

you know how they be demonizing us when we talk back.

Perhaps it wasn’t snakes in her hair, but locs,

and if I am my mother’s child I have followed in her footsteps.

If there’s anything that she has taught me, it’s that looks can kill, and that if I have to serve a man,

I should serve him well done.


ABOUT Mo

Mo (she/ her) is a 25-year-old poet, who is an avid reader, and lover of all things art; Her passion has always been music, poetry, and the arts as a whole. Poetry is her truth. Being able to find healing through her platform as an artist, is a gift that she is truly thankful for. She can be found on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr as @momothepoet.

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The Elpis Letters #2 | My Expense by Anonymous T

I'm turning 23 soon. Perhaps I'll be 23 by the time you read this, I'm not sure. 

I've learned a lot, I've learned a lot especially this past year and I...damn. 

It's hard to find the right words here. 

I think my understanding of womanhood has developed more than I could have imagined. I've got a firm grasp on how I am perceived as an individual to other individuals, and I feel like I'm so often treated like a pushover. People shove their responsibilities onto me because I'll "get over it" or I'll "just have to deal with it," and you know what, I'm tired. 

I'm tired of putting other people before myself, I'm tired of giving my energy and my generosity. I feel like I'm a piggy bank, my paycheck goes right to the bills, responsibilities get left behind for me to tidy up, and my mental health declines because of it. Lovers don't want to imagine a future with me, so it all gets called to quit. All of my coins are used up and spent by other people, my expense, I guess. 

I feel like I have been placed under a faucet, my clothes weighing me down as the sink begins to fill. I remove myself, my mind at least, disassociation at its finest as I check out and go numb for a while. 

Meanwhile, I feel like the male figures in my life get to go and do whatever they want, they don't have to deal with it all. I realize that I'm treated like I'm less of a person, at least I surely feel that way. Not just by those around me, but by society, which I often blame as a factor into everyone else's moods. 

I find that it's harder for me to land big paying jobs, it's harder for me to get accepted into the schools I want, and I wonder if it's because I'm inadequate, or if it's because I'm a woman. I've witnessed first hand how women are treated in this reality, and I'm just trying to keep my head above the water, to rise above this circumstance. 

I'm tired of women competing with each other and fighting each other. I'm tired of men tossing us aside and acting like we're nothing. 

I'm...everything. 

I claim my power back. Now. I will not show remorse or apologize for the new me walking around like I know everything because let me make this clear. I know what it's like to have nothing, so in turn, all that's left for me is fucking everything. 

I wish I was more cold-hearted sometimes, but I know, that I will continue allowing my heart to break open because if I become cold, I'll just be like the rest of them, and society will in turn have transformed my soul into mere wires and strings, and I do not want to become someone who is just going through the motions. 

I am a woman, and I will not give up. 


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The Elpis Letters #1 | A Letter to my older self by Snehal Amembal

Dear Snehal,

How are you? How old are you now? 60? 65? I wonder if you can read properly, or has that blasted disease affected your vision, too? Do you remember yourself from about 30 years ago? The anxiety, the helplessness, the uncertainty about the future. I hope it is not as bad as you imagined it to be. Can you recollect moments from your own life, or have they been wiped away once again by that merciless tyrant of a disease? I hope you are living with dignity and are surrounded by love, lots of love.

That brings me to your wonderful sons. I imagine that they have grown up to become  strapping young men oozing charm, kindness and generosity. Are they good looking? Of course they are! I hope that they have done well for themselves and are making you proud as always. I wonder if R has retired from his working life and that he is making time for himself and for you in particular. 

I hope that you are still able to travel far and wide irrespective of the challenges that you face on a daily basis. How do you keep yourself busy now? Do you still read as voraciously as you used to? Are you able to still write? I’m hedging my bets on you having released at least five books by now. Please tell me that you now have at home a dog, or at least a cat or two? I know they always brought you joy, so I sincerely hope that you are basking in their love. Finally, I wish that you are reading this letter out to your best friend who lives across the road from you and that a cure has been found.

Love,

Your younger self


About Snehal Amembal

Snehal (she/her) is a freelance writer, poet and blogger based in London with her husband and two toddlers. Her writing primarily reflects her motherhood journey, memories of her own childhood and the essence of everyday moments. Her debut collection Pause, inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic has been recently published. She is a Young Onset Parkinson's Disease warrior and creates awareness of the condition through her writing. She also reviews books authored by writers of South Asian heritage on her blog Desi Lekh.

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