The Line Break

I am thinking about mailboxes. Penpals. Letter writing. Stamps. Stickers. Waiting for something good to come in the mail. I’m also thinking about writers who acknowledge the act of writing in their work. How good it is to hear from someone we like, love, miss. A text from a friend. A voice message.

Here is a poem that imagines a letter with a single word that somehow conveys the whole entire sense of summer and a relationship.

Prompt: If you could send a word to someone in an envelope to remind them the way the speaker in the poem wants to remind their reader of a whole summer, what would it be? Now write a poem titled that word that also includes that word.

Hummingbird by Raymond Carver

                  for Tess

Suppose I say summer,
write the word “hummingbird,”
put it in an envelope,
take it down the hill
to the box. When you open
my letter you will recall
those days and how much,
just how much, I love you.