The Bluestone Review Spring 2022

Open Letter By Violeta Orozco (from The Broken Woman Diaries, forthcoming) I write this to you knowing you won’t understand because every poem is a love letter to an unloving ear to someone who has failed to listen is too afraid to talk back Perhaps our best poems are love letters to absence silence dead lovers forgotten faces perhaps our best words are fraught with pain because only in pain can we be humble only in pain can we be true I long for the day I can speak for myself speak to myself without having to speak to you in pain

perhaps one day I may be able to give you words that soothe words that are able to love you in your dark corner of loneliness caressing hands in this tactless age perhaps I have learned over the years though these words may not reach you they are for you and not only for you they exist for anybody that might need them on the nights when they most feel unlistened to and unloved perhaps one day this poem may become more than a poem break the countries that tear us apart become the love we were not able to give

I was not able to materialize

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