The love letter is an act of love in itself in that it replaces an absent loved one with their hallucinated presence. Although text messages are far less sophisticated and ‘emoticons’ now replace the language of love, they have one major advantage over love letters in that they are simultaneous. When lovers pine for each other, text messages allow their presence to be immediately conjured up, in reciprocal fashion, at each and every moment. The love letter is an invitation for us to consider the role of separation within love as a form of physical separation that fantasy and hallucination of the other’s presence serves to deny and which the love letter endeavours to put into words.