Leah’s  

By Hatte



Siss, when I grow up, I wanna love myself like you. I gotta tell you, man, I have been trying to. I want to build an empire of self-love, fortified with a knight to protect his moon dust, and the dopest ******* balance of work and play. Wish I could give you and myself the time of day.  



I hope you've faced the fact that you are my favorite poet. I've illegally download your vocal chords to my iPod, but love is not possession, it's appreciation. I still sing along to my favorite songs during my Pontiac performances.  



You are the best friend. I will sit silently in the back seat of your car while you and someone I've never met discuss the universe, and I will be content. I know we will always be soul-mates bound by poetry, so I'm not too worried about running out of time.



You know how hollow I have been made by the huffing and puffing of wolves in sheep's clothing, and you helped me rebuild with masonry. Brick by brick it stings my chest. To re-live, and set to rest. To uncover and decide what's best.  



5 days together was excess to spark this lifetime friendship, we were drawn together with more power than youths’ voices. It happened so fast I forgot to breathe. I don't remember the first thing I said to you, or the first thing we talked about, or the first time I was on your bed crying, or the first time you saw me half-naked and over-heated in our dorm room. It all seems a blur, there was no awkward small talk, we were as smooth and natural as a drag off a good ****.



The world has never and will never see anything quite like us.  



Our poetry, is of god's when we are together. So in other words, if Kai Davis and Kait Rokowski and Jasmine Mans had a baby it would be our poetry. We challenge each other to outdo the other with each line written, and not in a competitive way. But that competitive stage we were on the same page. We knew how to ******* do work!



You and I can make art until the end of time: the beginning of the end, is the most exciting thing yet. I couldn't embrace living together as soul sisters should, write together how poetry soulmates always would. I was on a runaway mission to drown out responsibility. Drowning in boys, drugs and my own self-loathing over stress. I forgot that I was luckiest girl in the ******* world to have you by my side. I think about it all the time. How much time I’ve wasted cause I want to get wasted cause I felt like I was a waste.



I love you for everything you've been through that made you this resilient and compassionate of a woman, every tear and every fantasy that made you this prodigy poet, every shattered heart-string that finally made your heart sing for you and bleed for others. Bleeding heart is a title you wear proudly, because you are infinite in love. You are worth more than fighting for, you are worth dying for.  

I can't imagine how I could survive the wild terrain of my own mind without you.  I can't imagine life without you, and I can't ******* fathom how you survive the wild terrain of your own mind and your own balancing act, please everybody first, kind of life. I am blessed to be a part of your support system. Maybe I never dig hard enough or have the time to find where you'd ever need help. You sail so smoothly, I hope I can breathe into your sails with my song.  



Four years and five months together, or a lifetime, or we are all each other and after this life I'm gonna be you or you are gonna be me and maybe one of us is on the way out of this singular existence to divinity, kind of together. We speak in metaphor and poetry, but simply.  



You’re now the undefeated title champion of this life, almost completely free of age restrictions. Happy Survival Anniversary, the future of humanity, my Leahbug.

This is all temporary, we are all temporary, this sun and my voice; they are all only here for the fragile concept of a moment. The only way we know how to defeat mortality is with the echo ringing in the pages of thought we can leave behind. Pieces of ourselves; like seeds.  



Like, we are all fleshy sacks of bones on a tilted rotating elliptical hunk of rock hurtling in infinite space. Positioned just so that it isn't too hot and it isn't too cold. We're the luckiest children of our common ancestors to stand straight and have humility. The coincidences factoring into this second, here and now, are awesome, and nearly impossible.  



Take a lesson from Medgar Evars wife and realize what she had to the hard way. Hate only hurts yourself, and that your enemies deserve the opposite of love: apathy.  



Take a lesson from Johnathan Larson, the playwright of Rent, and know the opposite of war is not peace, but creation. Why do you think children and artists breathe hope into our every breath?



Take a lesson from the comedian Bo Burnham, and consider that maybe God does not believe in you, and that if life on Earth could be Heaven, isn't it worth a try?



I've found divinity in the good words of individuals since grade school. Comedians, writers, activists, victims, wise old cat lady neighbors. Humans all have a story to tell and we're all blessed with the ability to listen. To understand the fellow human is more powerful than the sun that brought us here.  



We're all just a way of the universe to be able to understand itself, and we're all trying to understand our selves. Looks at these stars and see how infinite you are, how much family you have come from. God is inside all of us. Eyes like nebulas, like soul sisters. Brain cells like cathedral windows, we are divine by existence. Why would you ever exclude a single soul? To know all, to see all, God's omnipotence. Isn't that just another word for friendship?



Step back, look at this rock we all share, everything that has ever happened, every embarrassing moment you'll never forget, every first kiss, every marriage and divorce, every love lost and love found, every book and every comic happened right on that speck right there. Take notice, how borders can't be seen from space, how the only colors shining bright enough for space to see are blue and green. We are a family bound by this gravity and we all know how it get's us down.  



We live united under these stars and these clouds. It is every humans responsibility to care for every death and every life and every injustice we face as Earthkind.  



Be kind.



Be love.



Be divine.  



Be poet.  



Be human.

Closed mouths don't get fed. That's why I don't eat before I drink. Only pig out after cause the liquor opens me up. My toxic trait is I neglect myself. I neglect to ask for attention and help. Scarred//I mean// scared to be a helpless attention *****, but I can't help myself to a healthy helping of self love. An unsure small child, thinking how healthy looks like it tastes bad. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth how tasty fire between my teeth feels. Light a match to my cigarette to chase a shot of fireball. Would love to burn this ******* to the ground inside out. I like to lie to myself that it makes me feel something. Pretty sure chasing the opposite direction, to feel nothing.
Endless black void of soot and scorched. I'm hungry for something and I wish I knew what it was....

I almost called you up. Almost missed you again. Almost made the mistake of saying, hey how are you? Cause you're always not good. Always not doing what you should. Always trying to see of we'd be back together and when we could.

That good *** isn't worth the abuse. Not worth running to the hospital at two in the morning cause you tried to set yourself aflame. Fever dreams coming again. You are a living nightmare. Succubus of sadness still beating heart. You steal my heart with those puppy dog eyes. I am over trying to summon a phoenix from this burnt down house. I don't want to raise you.

I'm still raising myself, and I need to do it alone. Growing up alone is all I've ever known. But this poem should have never ******* been about you! I am the Phoenix not the summoner, I am fire not burnt house, I am already everything I so desperately wanted you to be!