I heard someone say that the love letter is every person’s contribution to literature. As honest and as earnest as you want to be in a love letter, people want to land that all-important impression that turns the “bes” to the “babes” (or “behs” to “bhabes,” depending on how you spell it). It doesn’t seem important or even relevant, but the love letter writer uses poetic and rhetorical devices; to deliberately express and impress, the opinions of others relegated to kebs.
At first, there’s that urge to okray and chaka-fy the attempt of someone in love to be literary, poetic, or profound. You don’t know what to make of words and phrases in love letters. Stopping short of “You’re the bandage that can heal the wound of my bleeding heart,” or perhaps “Sorrow never felt more real in sight when I missed saying goodnight,” or canned lyrics like “I’ll hang from your lips instead of the gallows of heartache that hang from above” (yi-hee), that’s the whole point.
Malapropism? Solecism? No, let’s use something so bonggacious: catachresis.
