Dear John: literary breakup letter challenge

This is my second third post about this challenge, which is to write a letter breaking up with a literary character. You may take the point of view of another character, real or of your own creation; there’s no wrong way to do this. You may choose anything from a nursery rhyme to a poem to a play to an opera to a short story—you get the picture: any genre.

My goal is to edit an anthology of these, so the prize will be inclusion in the anthology. You may write as many as you want, from as many characters as you want; however, if you enter more than one from the same character, they should be decisively different.

RULES:

1. Write a Dear John letter to a literary character. It can be any character from any story, play, or poem, from nursery rhymes to Tolstoy. The letter can be from another character in the original text, an offstage character, or even a reader—totally up to you.

2. Drop a link to the challenge in your entry, and put a link to your entry in the comments here.

3. I haven’t set a date to close the challenge.

4. Ideally, all winners will be published in an anthology of literary Dear John letters.

5. Any community you like, but Writers makes the most sense—no 600 word minimum there, and “Challenges” is an available tag in this community.

6. I don’t have any money, so I’m not handing any out.

7. Don’t talk about fight club.

So far we have letters from Medea, Jason, The Wife of Bath, Jack Sprat, Lady Macbeth, Juliet, Jill, Huck Finn, Shakespeare, the former Mrs. Pumpkin Eater, Patroclus (this one is quite beautiful), Dracula, Dr. Hyde, and more.

The object is to have fun, but reverence is absolutely encouraged as much as humor. There’s no wrong approach to this, and I hope to see more people participate.

I’m going to link what we have thus far for your inspiration.

I’m still writing my own as they come to me, and I encourage everyone to riff off of each other. Be serious or humorous—tone and subject are yours to choose, as they should be.

Thank you for playing in my sand box.

Please post entries in the comments on this post and include a link to the challenge in your letter.