People can’t be shed like snake skin.
Even through the rebirth
of intention, of loyalty, of love,
there’s an Other
that lingers like a ring on a coffee table,
a past someone
declaring power over lives
not hers to control.
I ache for his freedom.
I wish laughter were enough in this world.
I’d laugh away the insults collecting like dust,
unseen, brushed off at first
until the hate piles into a tangible heap.
A once small snide comment
sparks a fury.
That’s when people get hurt.
We don’t know how to talk to each other anymore.
You were my neighbor, my friend, my family
but someone said we were enemies.
Why did we listen?
In this world where laughter can hurt,
I pray for connection,
to simply feel your hand in mine,
intertwined
as we both remember it’s up to us to be good.
It starts with us.
It grows with trust.
It ends with love.
We can be good, you know.
We can be good parents
raising good humans,
laughing at only the good stuff,
teaching that hate gets us nowhere.
We can be good
if we choose.
But first we must own when we’re not.
I am not perfect
and neither are you.
I am not right all the time
and neither are you.
But we both can be good.
I believe in you.
I read a story posted on Facebook today about a little boy that got made fun of at school for wearing nail polish. Nothing good ever comes out of making fun of someone else. Why do we do it? There is no reward for insulting someone else.
Kids are sponges. They pick up the habits of those around them. Those kids that made fun of that boy saw someone else being a bully first. Our actions today impact the world of tomorrow. Let’s live in a good one.
This poem isn’t a work of art. It isn’t packed with imagery or metaphor. It’s simplistic in tone. It’s hardly my best writing, but the message felt important enough to share. Please be kind to one another. Tolerance means listening. Acceptance means understanding and having an open mind. Please try.
He told me how the waves felt out there,
like sliding down the road on a patch of ice,
screaming for traction,
and swallowing a gallon of water instead.
These were the years he’d survived,
years of betrayal, heartbreak, hunger, loss,
thrashing in the ocean
tethered to a surfboard,
fighting to resurface
before having any hope to breathe again.
He knew everything I wanted,
for he wanted them too,
but we were swimming against the current
and only he understood
the devastation that could drag us under
if we didn’t heed the water’s fury
and wait until we stood on two feet again
before trying to walk.
It’s been awhile but I’m trying to write again.
I am not innately anything,
born as a canvas
on which I adorn my life’s choices,
the writer of the words
I speak,
the artist of my path,
my shoes leaving prints of paint
where I’ve stepped,
my words staining ears,
training my heart to love
or to shame,
owning the power to
smile a good morning
to you.
–Leanne Rebecca
I saw a post on a friend’s Facebook this morning that simply said “in a world where we can choose to be anything, choose to be kind” and it really struck me. I think this is something many people forget and it includes kindness to yourself too. It’s easy to judge others unfairly for stupid reasons just because we can. It’s easy to focus on our flaws and our stresses, steeped in negativity. It’s hard to be kind when we’ve wired our brains to live in a frenzy, always rushing as we emotionally and physically push people out of our ways to get where we are going. We honk our cars and don’t let others merge in front of us on the highway, but why? It’s hard to choose to patient. It’s hard to choose to smile when nothing seems to be going right. It’s hard to accept other’s differences because they’re foreign to what we know, but we have to try. We have to celebrate one another. We need to make the choice to love, always. Love yourself, love your neighbor, love a stranger.
I don’t like the power
you hold over me,
the power I let you
hold over me,
clinging to rain stained memories
as insignificant in retrospect
as their simplicity—
holding my hand in the car.
I don’t like revisiting
that moment,
knowing now how little it meant to you
as it stained my life
with impossible desire
as childish as a birthday wish.
I don’t like the compulsion
to write about holes
that shouldn’t exist,
the ridiculousness of caring
for someone that viewed me as a blink.
I can’t stop thinking.
–Leanne Rebecca
When it comes to the heart, it’s amazing how quickly it can be hurt, that even the most meaningless action to one person can devastate another. The only perspective we ever really have is our own, especially when all of the sudden, perceived truths turn out to be wrong. This is my fancy way of saying that dating is hard.
Sleep well my friends.
The 2 AM heart
lingers a little more
on each beat
so that the in-between
silences feel all the heavier,
the pulse crawling with the time
in contrast to the mind
cycling through imaginary conversations
like a wind turbine,
the body and the spirit out of sync
in the darkness of wasted sleep.
–Leanne Rebecca
Unspoken
I need to write this letter that I’ll never send
to get all my thoughts out of my head
and for you to understand
that am not ok with how you left it.
You severed my reached out hand
with words left unsaid,
which hurt just as much as a deliberate hit,
bruising my cheeks with streaks of red.
You left,
vanishing with no regrets,
as sudden as if you were dead,
and yet here I stand,
hoping to see your ghost again.
I know my heart will mend,
a new man will take my reached out hand
and care for these thoughts in my head.
He’ll understand
that honesty is a gift
that tempers the madness of the broken hearted.
Disposable
I felt like the discard pile,
like you were playing cards
striving only for the better hand,
throwing away the rejects
with a smug grin and satisfaction for the win,
apathetic that I am a person.
Malfunctioning
The memory of you
is like static on a TV,
as dynamic as a blank screen
with the drone of garbled electricity.
What once filled my imaginings
with vivid scenes of dancing
and cheesy chemistry
was demeaned
the day you vanished without telling me,
an unexplained severing
I call nothing short of cowardly.
–Leanne Rebecca
I don’t often post more than one poem in a post, but I needed to get these out. Time to heal and get on with the weekend!
This room is so loud I can’t hear anything,
the voices blending into one sound,
a buzz that fills the air with silence.
I welcome the chaos,
the distraction of nonsense
that quiets my disquiet,
so I can sip on this glass of wine
and not think
about empty seats,
lost in noise.
–Leanne Rebecca
I shared one of my poems with my friend Gabby a couple days ago and was shocked to find out she had no idea that I write poetry. After 5 years of having this blog, I assumed everyone in my life was keenly aware of my writing. I share most of my posts on Facebook, which after hundreds of posts, has probably reached the level of annoying. Gabby asked me a little about my poetry, if I use it as a form of therapy or if I’m open to publish or share some of my more vulnerable posts with others, like the one I wrote about abuse last week. These questions seemed so easy to answer since poetry has become such a marker of my identity, but it made me realize how lucky I am to have found this outlet. Writing is indeed a release and a medium I use to work through tough shit. It’s helped me heal through life’s difficulties, like an abusive relationship, and I don’t know where I’d be without it. Many of my poems carry a solemn tone because of this, but I want you all to know that I am far from sad. Writing allows me to let go of whatever ails me, so that as soon as it’s on the page, I feel free. I’m working through something right now, and I haven’t fully written out its story, but in time, the words will come out and I’ll rise up again.
It was the middle of a packed dancefloor
where his kiss transported me
to a dimension all ours,
one where everyone else vanished,
where I felt only his lips on mine,
his hands on my waist,
our pulses pounding in tandem,
the chaos of the world disappearing
as I let my heart lean into his arms.
It was a magic
I hope to know again.
–Leanne Rebecca
The hardest part of abuse
isn’t the getting through it
or climbing your way back
out of a dirt filled hole
until you find the sun again,
the hardest part of abuse
is the invisibility of the damage,
that even years after you’ve escaped,
after you’ve healed,
after you’re no longer a shell of a person,
after you’ve opened yourself up again
to loving another human,
after you’ve accepted it
and can freely talk about the atrocities
of how someone preyed upon you like a wild animal,
you discover that no matter how strong you are
or how much you’ve learned
or how easily you smile again,
the scars remain.
The anxiety of the hunt
has imprinted inside your skull,
a tattoo seeping fear into your bloodstream,
no matter how safe or good or joy filled
you’ve grown.
The hardest part of abuse
is that no one else knows any of this.
–Leanne Rebecca
I haven’t written anything in awhile and I think it’s because I’ve been trying to find a way to get these thoughts out, but didn’t know the words.
I found heart shaped clouds
swirled in my hot chocolate,
a kiss of good luck
brought to my lips
with the giddiness of a kid
looking up at the sky
seeing what magic I might find,
if I allow innocence
to guide my eyes.
–Leanne Rebecca
I hope your Wednesday night was as delicious as mine! I recommend the Aztec Hot Cocoa at Picassos.
My heart is like the sky,
wrapping around the horizon
like a hug for the souls below,
an embrace that connects
me to you
across the expanse of the Earth.
I can feel the world
inside my ribs
and sometimes I fear
my chest will explode.
–Leanne Rebecca
I’m trying something new tonight. I’m letting the words speak for themselves without influencing the interpretation of my poetry by presenting it with a picture. It’s always nice to mix it up. Let me know what you think!
This poem is dedicated to my wonderful friend Katie 🙂
Much love, Leanne
I wrote this poem a few weeks ago, but it didn’t seem right at the time, so I never posted it. I came back to it tonight and found that all it needed was a new title, a couple of word changes, and one line added in. It feels like a whole new poem now. So weird how that happens.
–Leanne
The bittersweet truth of struggle is that it serves as unending inspiration for creativity. The beauty of poetry is that it serves as an outlet for struggle. The sadness of poetry is that it is eternal, which means the struggle becomes entombed in history. I’ve been writing a lot lately, thankful for the inspiration but fighting the sadness of it.
Thank you for reading 🙂
–Leanne
She's in Prison 