The lips are a boundary. They are portals where the inside is exposed to the outside, where the breath of life passes in and out, where food is taken in, and speech breathed forth. The mouth is the most variegated gateway into the interior of the body, taking in all sorts of things from outside the body and throwing out things from inside, and the lips are the guardians. To kiss is to draw near to that boundary between me and you. - Peter LeithartIf the larger narrative arc of Love Letters traces the evolution of a relationship, interpolating a kaleidoscope of mini narratives in an effort to shirk traditional notions of titular characters, we have moved out of the excitement of the first night and into the engrossing sexual potency of infatuation. But true to the tenor of the piece at large, this is not merely a descriptive endeavor. While there is something sensual and perhaps fragile in the confluence of vintage pornography, time-lapse blooming flowers, gushing eros, there is a dark underpinning (the domestically subversive broken house of cards) to it all which is only made more acute at the time of writing for in some bizarre confluence of historical and cultural references, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream", fanfared by every major media outlet, stretches across time, as I plot the course of this essay, to engage with Act 3's preface: the ominous, syblline voice of Langston Hughes as he recites his poem "Dreams":
To hold onto your dreams is the task that Act 3 holds up for it's viewers, dreams of love, of anything and everything, while all the while knowing that dreams will pass and the field will be barren, frozen with snow or not.Hold fast to dreamsFor if dreams dieLife is a broken-winged birdThat cannot fly.Hold fast to dreamsFor when dreams goLife is a barren fieldFrozen with snow.
