The speaker is writing to Jean, and the confession is blunt: I hated you. The memory that stirs that hatred is Jean pouring love into another woman — “her” — so completely that the speaker’s own dream of having her collapses. The phrase “iridescent bubble” makes clear that those hopes were fragile, and Jean’s single “fleshy gesture” destroyed them. That love is described in physical, almost violent terms: molten flame, pulsing veins, blood left as a river of fire. It is an overwhelming possession. The speaker’s hatred, too, is not mild jealousy; it is called primal, rooted in the flesh of all three people involved, and it is mixed with envy. The mood is intense but restrained, more bitter admission than angry outburst. By telling Jean directly, the speaker seems to want Jean’s conquest to feel even sweeter, which gives the letter a painful, defeated edge.
Letters Found Near a Suicide: To Jean — Summary
When you poured your love Like molten flame Into the throbbing mold Of her pulsing veins Leaving her blood a river of fire And her arteries channels of light, I hated you ... Hated with that primal hate That has its wells In the flesh of me And the flesh of you And the flesh of her I hated you-- Hated with envy Your mastery of her being ... With one fleshy gesture You pricked the iridescent bubble Of my dreams And so to make Your conquest more sweet I tell you now That I hated you.