Love letter

            
             " The River Merchant's Wife" is a poem about a fourteen-year-old girl who was forced into an arranged marriage to someone she barley knew. In which she kept herself very distant from her husband for a long period of time. "At fourteen I married My Lord you/ I never laughed, being bashful/Lowering my head, I looked at the wall/ Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back,"(7-10). By age fifth teen she finally let go and fell in love with her husband. At sixteen her love had left to go to war and she became lonely. "At sixteen you departed/ you went out into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies, / and you have been gone five months," (15-17). Back in that day and time women were not allowed to walk the streets with out their husbands so she had to stay put, therefore the gates had become covered in moss, and basically there was no one there to take care of the house and tend to her needs. " By the gate now, the moss has grown, the different mosses, / Too deep to clear them away!" (20&21). .
             In the end she states that if he is coming home down through the river she will meet him half way. "If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang/ Please let me know beforehand/ And I will come out to meet you," (27-28). Basically this poem is showing how one's love had grown through separation in a love letter.
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