Maya Angelou

Love Letter

Love Letter - meaning Summary

Intimate Assertion of Power

The speaker writes a direct, sensual address to an absent beloved, imagining shared physical and spiritual movement. Domestic and cultural details—Tai Chi, Oberlin shoji—anchor desire in specific gestures. The poem traces a shift from drifting vulnerability to embodied agency: erotic longing becomes a force that energizes and transforms the speaker, ending in a clear, confident claim of regained power.

Read Complete Analyses

Listening winds overhear my privacies spoken aloud (in your absence, but for your sake). When you, mustachioed, nutmeg-brown lotus, sit beside the Oberlin shoji. My thoughts are particular: of your light lips and hungry hands writing Tai Chi urgencies into my body. I leap, float, run to spring cool springs into your embrace. Then we match grace. This girl, neither feather nor fan, drifted and tossed. Oh, but then I had power. Power.

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