Assurances Of Love Set Me Free Poem by Louise Tredoux

I looked at the letters in unbelief – actually he had written
to me – and his letters were intercepted – nobody knew
or cared how I suffered, thinking my beloved had deserted
me; I opened the first letter and read – he assured me of
his love – and I started crying, crying for all the pain I had
suffered, inuring myself to the pain of becoming a recluse,
left by the love of her life; I looked back on the vistas of pain
I had envisaged, the bleak future before me – unnecessary;

He was thinking of me; he was writing faithfully; while I was
preparing to be alone without him, pressing the pain in my
hands until I was numb, making myself accept my fate without
him, now this sudden release of incessant pain – I cried and
cried in overpowering delight, shocked at the terrible future
I was contemplating until his letters were handed to me, until
his assurances of love set me free…