Reviewed on 2/24/2025
★★★★☆
Jesse Holth depicts the sacrifices and bruises that come with love and youth. In the first three stanzas, she narrates the awakening power of this first lover, someone who brings “a thousand days of spring,” and the speaker, “ready to fly,” is given wings to soar. Their presence, the taste of the first, thaws the long winter of waiting and parts of her heart never been opened before. Most of their liveliness is, however, worn down like unbroken lines rendering us breathless; their love becomes “slow erosion.” She further italicizes the pain that comes from maturing and “learning to love” — “we must unglove ourselves, pry/ loose what’s under the skin.” They stand on tiptoe, unearthing the reality of romance underneath fantasy. It also speaks to how love requires us to take off our disguise, “naked, bared out/ in full color.” Love is cruel and raw; it asks us to give all we have.
The ending records the lovers’ demise, her “pancake heart … weak/ from all that trying.” What starts as a dream turns into a trial and battle. Holth asks in reverence, “How much/ can we love, before it hurts?” Love and pain are interwoven; to love is to accept loss. It is worth noting, however, that most of the poem speaks in ambiguous generalizations. It may add to its emotional intensity by establishing the speaker’s relationship with “you” earlier in the poem.
Full Poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/1639200/letter-to-us-younger
Caden's Nest 
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