ABOUT

Writing a love letter is a deeply intimate act with a costly price. The writer of such pages has opted to perform a kind of pre-mortem autopsy for the receiver. They have made a Y-shaped incision, used rib shears to an effective degree, and shifted their left lung aside to bare their heart. Through this bloody ordeal, these letters become a reflection of who we are and what makes us whole.

Unlike ordinary correspondence, a love letter aches for a reply. An unspoken contract has formed between the writer and the recipient. I have shown you my heart, please answer. Thus, the pieces in this magazine require such a response from our readers, whether that be rejection and disgust to amorous acceptance and reciprocation.

In the eyes of the Romantic, a love letter may take many forms: a bus route you take twice a day, the calluses on your fingers, a receipt kept in your wallet, a peculiar-shaped rock found at the beach, or a jar of baby teeth your mother still keeps around. A love letter can be to a place, a dream, a person, even oneself.

The monotony of life is ensnaring: an endless cycle of tasks and an infinite series of choices that make themselves. The trials of living often obscure the act of living itself. And so, it is the quiet compulsion of the Romantic who finds time to remember that we are alive; in living there is love, and in love, there is both beauty and bloody struggle.