Nine Santa Cruz authors participated in The Love Letters Project on Saturday, February 11th, held at The Musuem of Art and History (MAH), Bookshop Santa Cruz, and Felix Kulpa Gallery. Each writer was asked to contribute a poem or letter they had written for someone or something they love. The poems and letters written by Alyssa Young at The Love Letters Project follow her contribution.

Alyssa's Love Letter

Dear Jonah,

Your eyes are full of astronauts,
stomach raw from congealed space food and
the hearts of half-barrel boys just waiting
to grow up Neil Armstrong, Buck Rogers.
At the age of six you
watched your mother’s belly
bloom like solar eclipses
erupting between starlit palms.
Nights spent awake in your thread count,
wondering how life could exist inside
such a strange planet. But
now you are older and you know about things
like gravity and god and the bodies of women.
So when you kissed me with
your crater-filled tongue
I was nothing more than stardust.
The planets looked down and whispered
how pale milk white we were.
How flesh soft, how bone weak.
And you pushed yourself,
whole, into me,
galaxy nectar falling from your fingertips.

Kiss me, Jonah,
kiss me with each of your many faces.
Ears full of ice crystals, mouth full of meteors.

Dear Jonah,
all of my poems are love poems.

Alyssa

Photograph by Marica Quackenbush

Poems written by Alyssa for the Love Letters Project:

• For Doug from Suzanne
• For Abby from Rebecca
• For Theodore from Betsy
• For Ayalette from Zach
• For Querta from Jennifer
• For Monkey from Hallie
• For David from Shelley
• For Dick from Sandra
• For Babe from Susan
• For Teacher Leah from Zoe