The lonely & the loved

Letter #002

The Soft Instructions for Staying Alive: Jasmine Tea

There is a particular tenderness in a letter that wasn’t meant for the world. A letter folded into a phone case the way someone might tuck a sachet of jasmine tea into a drawer, for comfort, for scent, for reasons they can’t quite name. A small, quiet thing kept close because letting it go would feel wrong.

This one begins with an apology for the red writing, a shy clearing of the throat. But beneath that awkwardness is an ache:

“I kept it folded up in my phone case. For what? I’m not sure.”

This is what loneliness sounds like when it stops pretending.
Not dramatic.
Not polished.
Just a person unsure why they held on to something they couldn’t throw away.

The letter meanders between self-doubt and generosity.
The writer imagines every possible response — burn it, eat it, bin it, keep it. It’s the nervous hospitality of someone placing a steaming cup in front of a stranger and saying, “If you don’t like it, that’s okay. But here… I made this for you anyway.”

And then the letter shifts.
The handwriting changes.
The emotional temperature warms; like jasmine blossoms unfurling in hot water.

The red ink becomes a kind of manifesto:

It’s okay to let go.
It’s okay to lose hope and find it again.
It’s okay to feel lonely, unmade, afraid.
Just breathe.

The writer doesn’t reach for grand philosophies.
Instead, they place the reader back inside their own body:
the inhale, the exhale, the miracle of a chest rising and falling.
The way trees and birds and stars wait for us without expectation, the way jasmine tea waits too, cooling on a bedside table until we finally take the first slow sip.

This letter doesn’t pretend the world is easy.
It reminds us that being alive at all is a cosmic accident, billions of years, millions of choices, starlight and luck and the improbable orchestration of everything that led to you.

And then, the final plea:

“I want you to breathe life back into this world.”

It sounds almost like a blessing whispered over a warm cup:
a call to soften, to stay, to rejoin the living.

The letter becomes more than a message.
It becomes a ritual. A prompt to write your own, pass it on, steep your story in someone else’s life the way jasmine blossoms seep into water, changing it entirely, simply by being there.

The Lonely & The Loved