Love Poem: Her Wuthering Letters
Craig Sipe Avatar
Written by: Craig Sipe

Her Wuthering Letters

You get to a point where 
you can’t read them anymore
and consider yourself a grown-up.

But it wasn’t until I was fifty-two 
that I threw them away. 

How long could they hide
in a high school brief case
next to a box of sweaters 
in the attic?

So…into the Dumpster Doodle-Doo 
they went: her Wuthering epistles, 
and my Heathcliff’s angst

Risen to the “beep beep beep” 
of a trash trawler’s chaw.

By then she was a preacher’s wife
in Pennsylvania, and I was running

Manufacturing trades for a defense 
plant in Rhode Island,
a job for which I was 
wholly unsuited

They were two new skins 
for the both of us 
only one of which
had been redeemed.