À l’heure du tout à l’image et du buzz sans suite, «l’express» souhaite faire découvrir la plume de poètes, de chanteurs, d’écrivains et de tous ceux qui jettent leur âme sur le papier en ce jour de la St-Valentin.

Paper notes to a fellow human, February 14

Self-love

To a fellow human, II

Daily human looked at herself in the living room mirror

that was quietly placed on the nearby wall.

Looking at herself, she thought,

“The month of February,

so associated to love,

come a given date,

often loses its connection to the self.

To the love we carry in ourselves,

for ourselves.

The kind of love that sits quietly within,

tenderly within.”

“The prosperity of spirit

often goes so unnoticed and slowly forgotten.

Gradually becoming a distant memory

of what we once, and could always

do for ourselves.”

“Look within for the answer,”

said the wise widow to the passing human.

“Knock on your heart’s door

and open your mind’s windows,

there is so much to be explored and known.”

“Walk through its corridors,

and look for the answers.

Everything was already written at birth,

within your walls and self.”

Daily human,

dwelling, breathing, seeing, and living,

noticed the shopkeeper cycle past on his bicycle as the needle struck

two in the afternoon, singing under his breath;

“In the second month of twenty twenty-six

True life gave to me

Love for myself

And a bucket-full of giant strength.”

This second week of February,

let us remind ourselves

that we can love ourselves,

We can love,

ourselves.

That we can prosper

with and within

what we already have.

Bio

Rebecca D’Souza

A poetry aficionado, she led workshops in collaboration with the Caudan Arts Centre, including “Exploring Creativity through Poetry” for children and teenagers (2024), “Halfway Down the River”, a creative writing workshop for young adults during the centre’s “Youth Arts Festival” (February 2025), and most recently, metaphor-inspired workshops, “The Stone and the River” for children and caregivers and “Leaf in the Wind” for teenagers (December 2025). She is the author of “89 Questions to the Moon”