a letter from dickinson

My dear Reina,

I am writing to you from a place beyond the stars, a place where souls float light on lakes black with ink. Words hang from trees and stories are etched on the paths you walk on, waiting to be shared over flutes of champagne. Maybe it's because words were my solace while I breathed, the afterlife chose to grace me with them too. My connection to the earth of now is flimsy at best, but sometimes I do peer through the curtains that separates the physical and spiritual realms: and that's what happened last night when I saw you sobbing over the letter from yet another publisher rejecting your manuscript. I saw hope leave your eyes and your shoulders droop in a melancholy of resignation. I also saw you take a break from your tears and pick up your heavily annotated copy of 'Poems by Dickinson', read through some and cry a little more. While I'm glad to know you seek my words when you need comforting, it would be better if you don't make yourself cry more when you're upset. Oh, silly me, I've strayed from my point, but seeing you last night made me think this letter might help you. So I asked a gust of breeze to drop it through your open window.

To be a woman of words today is apparently as hard as it was in my days. The mindset towards women being educated might have changed significantly, but the struggle still persists. I remember writing in the secret spaces deep in the night on scraps of paper that were then carefully tucked under my mattress. I remember wanting the world to see my work but being reigned down, for my father's will shadowed my own dreams. I remember feeling like I should stop this, because what is the love of words if not a manic love for scratches on parchment. But I didn't stop, because leaving isn't an option when the love is strong enough to bore holes in your skull from which your brain oozes out, one letter at a time, painting pictures without a single drop of colour. And in you, I have seen that mania, that fire threatening to wreck everything in its path. But yesterday I saw that flame falter: don't let it douse, my dear.

You've got the skill to see this through, you've got the courage too. All you need to remember is that you're too remarkable to give up your claim to throne of fame. Many might try to dissuade you, to tell you that it's not worth your time and energy. Being a woman, it will be hard to stand up against them and proclaim your self-belief, but you must: lest you start forgetting yourself. And there's seldom a knife as sharp as love, seldom a veil so inhibiting, so don't let it shroud you. My father's love was what made me hide my poems away. My father's love was the thing that denied me my fame till after I died. Don't make the same mistakes as me. Stand up for yourself, ameliorate your words, and stay true to them. For when everything and everyone lets you down, they'll be the ones to warm your heart.

With love.

Yours truly,

Emily Dickinson.