It’s a red letter Valentine’s Day in the Big Apple.
A citywide campaign where New Yorkers write anonymous love letters and place them in red mailboxes inside small businesses — dubbed the Love Letter Gallery — received over 1,000 notes this year, addressed to everyone from spouses and lovers to doormen and roommates.
“The Love Letter Gallery was created to celebrate love in all its forms. It’s truly a feel good project, meant to share stories of love, loss and connection,” the project’s founder, East Villager Kelsie Hayes, told The Post.
The mailboxes were scattered across Manhattan and Brooklyn from coffee shops like Caffe Paradiso in SoHo and The Elk in Nolita to the West Village jewelry store Tarin Thomas and Greenpoint’s Big Night, a dinner party speciality shop.
Thirty of the standout letters — some heartwarming, while others heartbreaking — were then chosen to be featured in a one-day exhibition on Feb. 7 at the SoHo gallery HOST on Howard.
“I am not brave enough to tell you this in person, so I am doing it here,” one heartfelt letter began. “You mean so much to me.”
“I don’t know how you do it, but you make everything feel lighter just by being you,” another gushed.
One was even addressed to New York City: “The one I got to love, and who finally loved me back.”
Hayes, the owner of POPUPFLORIST — who launched the labor of love last year — paired the letters with floral arrangements inspired by their words for the exhibit.
Last year’s winning letters included ones for unrequited loves, like “the most beautiful girl who works in the bookshop,” to whom the writer hadn’t yet mustered up the courage to talk.
There was also a heartfelt love letter penned to New York from “an artist with big dreams.”
“I’m in love with you, but also with my high school sweetheart who isn’t able to move here and it sometimes feels as though my heart is torn on two different countries,” the letter said.
A sultry letter sizzled up the exhibit: “The sex was so good, the neighbors lit a cigarette after.”
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