Neurotic Love Letters

tatiana de la tierra

BEFORE:  ILLUSION

Mi amor:

On this Tuesday afternoon a wooden-wheeled cart squeaks by and the neighbors play cheap vallenatos, the ones you hate.   Birds breathe in song in the back yard.

I WAIT FOR YOU.

Gentle wind and the soft green of the garden drench me.  I wear tangerine nails and rosy lips, and red-and-black-tiger-striped cotton pants. My toes scrunch the velvet carpet of green moss that grows on cold rocks, miniature white flowers peeking out from the cracks. With all the colors,

I WAIT FOR YOU.

I made you dinner:  short-grain brown rice with carrots, corn, red peppers, and garlic. And when you get here I’ll prepare the Hawaiian papaya and sugar mangoes with a thick guava and banana sauce.  With Creole vegetables and unpeeled fruits,

I WAIT FOR YOU.

My love, the wind doesn’t cease to be soft, the birds don’t cease to be song, and my love doesn’t cease to be yours.

I WAIT FOR YOU.

DURING:  LUST

Amorcito:

I’m still in our hotel bed, naked, my clothes strewn on the floor where you left them.  I ate potato chips and drank pineapple juice and finished your almonds.  I don’t know what time it is, but the morning light filtering through the yellow curtain lingered on my eyelids, waking me.

I AM YOURS MORE THAN EVER.

Preciosa, I need to love you more, to eat you more, to keep your taste in my throat until I see you again.  You are delicious. You take me with so much love, so perfectly.

I LOVE YOU WITH MY OPEN SEX.

Amor, forgive me for loving you with a passion that surpasses reason. You traveled seven hours to spend an open-eyed, open-hearted night with me.  I feel so close to you.  Our breaths never stopped mingling, nor our flesh, nor our love.

I ADORE YOU.

AFTER:  BETRAYAL

Mi amor:

I haven’t stopped loving you but the pain of our relationship has turned me into a despicable, overly sensitive and insecure creature. I am not functioning for my survival.  And two pimples erupted on my left forearm; I know it’s because of us.

I HATE MYSELF.

I told you once that I didn’t know if I could forgive you for betraying me.  I tried to let it go and believe that you were more confused than dishonest.  Still,

I DON’T TRUST YOU.

That stained white cap you wore when we first met turned me off, and so did that cheap-looking knotted gold earring.  Your soft, low, polite voice and the way you fold your hands when you speak made me tag you as insecure, conservative, unimaginative.

I DIDN’T EVEN LIKE YOU AT FIRST.

I agreed to have sex with you because I had pre-menstrual horniness and I needed a good fuck to get the blood flowing.  I didn’t think you’d be any good in bed because you bored me with your talk of “caressing” women.  But I figured it was worth the risk because we’d never see each other again and anyway, when you squeezed my thigh for an instant in the bus, I immediately oozed.

WE SHOULD HAVE JUST FUCKED AND LEFT IT AT THAT.

You told me that you didn’t love her any more and that the magic had worn off.  You portrayed her as an immature, manipulative alcoholic who didn’t even please you in bed and who threatened to kill you if she found you with another woman.  You wanted out but you were never brave enough to leave.

YOU LIED TO ME.

At first I thought that the close relationship you had with your family was due to mutual love and business ties.  Now I see that you let them devalue your work, control your money, limit your life and our love, and humiliate you for being a lesbian.

I LOST MY RESPECT FOR YOU.

I believed in our dream of sharing a life together.  Feeling tiny in my kind-size bed, I made a space that waited for you.  I wore your ugly knotted gold earring like a trophy.

I HATE YOU FOR MAKING ME LOSE FAITH IN LOVE.

6 de marzo de 1994, mayami



Originally published:

de la tierra, tatiana. “Neurotic Love Letters.” Dear Sappho: A Legacy of Lesbian Letters. Ed. Kay Turner. London: Thames and Hudson. 1996: 88-89.  Also published as: “Neurotic Love Letters.” Between Us. Ed. Kay Turner. San Francisco: Chronicle. 1996: 88-89; “Neurotic Love Letters.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 8.2/4 (2004): 93-96. “Neurotische Liebesbriefe.” Trans. Stefanie Visel. Mein Lesbisches Auge 5 (My Lesbian Eye 5). Ed. Laura Mérrit and Regina Nössler. Berlin, Germany: Konkursbuch, 2006. 277-279