[Epistolary] Love Letter to Your Special Interest

Read the winning entry for our May 23, 2025 prompt, "Write a love letter to your special interest."

Neurodivergent Narratives Presents: Love Letter Contest

An experience in showing your passion for the things you love most.

"To my dearest, softest, pastel sage finger weight yarn…”
by Kaleigh E

“To my dearest, softest, pastel sage finger weight yarn”

I don’t want to sit here - a cacophony of voices mixed with pungent, rotting perfumes that make my eyes sting and my temples pulse - the ticking clock, the burning, dizzying artificial lights, the tapping keys, the blasting fetid air. Please, I can’t be away from you for another moment!

I long to caress your softness tickling between my fingers, barely tangible until I find your tangles that I ache to unravel. My happiness depends on plunging my fingers into the depth of your fine, soft lengths - to feel your warmth like basking at a hearth on a day of iced and fogged hills - to mingle in the scent of your wild creation on the thyme-filled fields, remembering your living, vibrant source. You were sheared and laden and spun and dyed and dried and wrapped, beautiful and whole, by the time we met, and I held your strands against my cheek. I miss you, my dearest, my soul.

Please come to me now, as only our rhythmic knotting can dispel this feverish agitation that has possessed me. Together, we are the creation of mystical new patterns, as row by row, you drape luxuriously over my lap. When mayhem erupts around us, you will be there as a soft shield, a talisman, a recorded tapestry, around my trembling body, into which I can shelter and grow into a thing with resilience.

I can barely breath at the thought of these tessellations that we could create together! I promise to chain you and cover you in double - no treble! - crochets, or alternate purl and knit, purl and knit, just as you like it. No need for scissors, I will use only my teeth on your tenderness! I’ll buy those extra-large wooden ones, that you know I’ve been eyeing, which will leave you airy and breathless. We can play with cables again, so I can trace your intricate pattern down my arms, down my torso. We can play with the metal pins to fabricate the softest lace to place you against my thighs… I sigh.

Yet, you are not here! We are separated by locked doors and dark, foreboding hallways. How I long for you to be here! I need you in my arms!

Is our quiet rustling so disruptive that together we have been banned in this public space? They demand my eyesight, my stillness, my undivided attention. Oh, if only they knew - how your mere serene presence against the sensitive nerves on my fingertips would allow my encumbered mind to settle, to filter distractions, to comprehend their words, to be able to participate, as they want. I ache for you and your self-possessed, easy poise and infinite understanding.

My love, I plead - I beg - save me!

- Yours, in turmoil without you -

“The Written Word”
by Katie Robin.

To my longest and dearest friend, The Written Word,

It's you, love. You that stays when I've exhausted everyone else, that comforts me in the blaring silence of insomnia. You're a heavy blanket when my teeth chatter with the frustration and rage of being misunderstood AGAIN.

You're the gentle mediator between my bluntness and the fragility of the people who say they won't run, but never dare to take off their shoes.

You're the keeper of all the love and all the regret for those who have gone from me. How can you contain emotions so heavy and endless that I can barely perceive them? But you hold it all with ease.

When I have no effort left to push clumsy vibrations through tired vocal chords, when I can't think of the way to make them sound palatable, there you are.

Through decades of technological advancements, capitalistic gatekeeping, and ever more malignant censorship, I've seen you persist.

After all, what restraints could ever keep you bound as long as I have even one breath left in my lungs? Only death could ever keep me from preserving you the way you've preserved me all these years.

This is my promise. This will be my legacy.

Your humble companion until the end,

Me

“Dear Dora, a love letter”
by Fiona Baker.

“Photography”
by Louise Lomas

“To Taylor, With Love”
by Alethea Shapiro