Song Lyric Sunday – Killing Me Softly – Fugees

Letters

For this week’s prompt of communication, I chose the form of ‘letters.’ To the current generations, this may seem an outdated concept, but I have written many letters in my life. I was born in the early eighties, so I like to think I’m not that old. During my life, I have exchanged many postcards and letters.

Cards for Mother and Grandmother

My mother and I would send each other postcards randomly. They could be cards with Disney figures, cute cats or any other card we had found, next to the Christmas and Easter holidays, of course. If I visited a zoo or theme park, I made sure to pick up several postcards to have something to send in the next couple of months. When I had a card with cats, I made sure to also send one to my grandmother as she was very fond of cats. It was a lovely tradition almost and one I miss a lot.

Whenever I open an old box in the attic, there’s bound to have a card fall out, often sent to me by my mother. The text on it gives me a glimpse of where she was in her life at that time.
What, to me, hurts the most are the stacks of blank cards I find now and then – the ones I didn’t send. I would only send one every couple of months, always buying way more than I needed for that interval. And now it’s too late.

Of course, I send them to my friends now and then. Or, when my neighbours had a baby during the lockdown last year, and I couldn’t go out to buy a card, I selected one from my Disney stack to give to them. I’m sure my mother would have approved of that purpose.

Love Letters

In all honesty, I don’t remember ever writing a love letter. I probably wrote to my lovers, but if I ever gave them the words I had written down, I doubt it. I know I have a letter addressed to Brian Littrell of the Backstreet Boys hidden in a box in the attic. I was a major fan, and the world of fandom was different than it is today. There was no Twitter where you could post and hope they’d notice.

I remember a letter in my life about ending a relationship. I recently discovered it, and it was from my first boyfriend’s mother. I had this boyfriend for a very brief period when I was about fourteen or fifteen. In the letter, she told me that she was very sorry, but her son wasn’t the most trustworthy person, and it was unfair to keep me waiting. I think I only met this boy once or twice while at my friend’s place, and our relationship was never very serious, to begin with. But his mother broke it off on his behalf.

Some Letters are Private

Even though I’m a blogger and share a lot, perhaps even too much, with the world, I could never fathom how it would feel like the main character in this song to have your letters read aloud to a group of strangers. I have plenty of booklets and secret computer files filled with personal scribblings, written when I was upset, crying and angry. These words are just for me, not to be shared with strangers. It would be like he was ‘Killing me softly with his song.’

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Song Lyrics Sunday is a prompt by Jim Adams, other entries can be found here: https://jimadamsauthordotcom.wordpress.com/2021/10/16/human-connections/