A Love Letter to Helga Pataki

You shine so bright, they force you into a shadow,
growing into a sunflower without the sun to turn to,
girl, you got the magic
You are surrounded by skeptics
who weren’t present witness to your blossom,
they doubt it’s occurrence, they doubt you.
I feel your anger,
the nonchalant way of going about
expecting nothing from the people that interact with the day.
No one will let you down without your permission.

I get why you write,
why you obsess, why you get mad,
that you love so hard and so much,
it drags you down like a responsibility.
So you stopped carrying your heart in your hands.
I know most times you leave it at home,
perhaps in your closet,
so no one will know you have one, too.
You hide your soft so no one try to shape you
into something you are not.
You don’t want anyone to accidentally step on it
and then feel bad for not accepting their “sorry.”
To you that word is flimsy,
can’t even take being thrown in a trashcan.

Helga, I know how bad waking up can be,
when no one is there
to say good morning,
or there when you get back home,
or there when your world is screaming novels at you.
And I get that sometimes loneliness is not a choice,
it’s the only option when no one chooses you back.

Please write until everything you have to say
is able to be read and I’ll read it.
Helga you are so beautiful,
and loving yourself is only half the battle,
sometimes it’s the full war.
Thank you for the Saturday mornings,
for those 20 minutes it wasn’t so bad to be alone.