—email—
As always, my Sundays are highlighted by reading through this week’s selection of postcards. In particular, this one, more than any one I have read before has struck a chord deep within. I have been struggling with suicide ideation for the last several months, to the point that I just needed to figure out how to do it ‘just right’. The line of that poem “there are no beautiful suicides” is enough to convince me this life, as hard as it is, is worth living. And maybe this knowledge will give me the courage to finally put postage on the secret that I’ve been wanting to send for a long time.
Dear Frank,
I am the poet who wrote the poem that begins, “Fuck the poets of the past, my friends…” (Its title is “Afterthought.”) My former student published it on Postsecret years ago and it has spread to people in distant places, unknown to me until two years ago, when a woman somehow found me and told me that the poem had help her too.
I was trying to help a few students in one small poetry class on Long Island when I shared that poem with them and today I was notified that it is a Postsecret Classic. You cannot imagine how grateful I am that I have been able to do more good than I intended to, and that I got to find out that I did so.
What a gift for the soul.
Thank you,
-Phil