Poem #3 of 2024

When you try to write a poem but well, it becomes an essay…So, maybe it's prose? A composition of life updates? Hannah Haddadi Presents: Poem #3 of 2024?

Yeah, I don’t know so let’s just get on with it.

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I stand in the kitchen listening to Garamond, duplicate songs on repeat and a playlist that feels like September of 19‘. There’s a fever buzzing about like a tingling sensation on the tips of my fingers, inside my body extending to outside this house. I can see that the sun is out and bird allies are perched on branches of our sacred, underworldly apple tree. My phone is constantly lighting up with text messages from dear friends and clients asking if I’m okay. I know that really they’re wondering where I’ve been and what the heck is going on. It is a sweet moment though, knowing that I am being thought of and that I haven’t been totally forgotten. I laugh at the realization of my feelings because isn’t that what the living so crave - to be thought of and remembered? And isn’t that why so many are afraid to die? The fear of being forgotten? Many cultures believe that we venerate the dead, tell their stories and bring them into ritual so they can be remembered - in so, that they will never truly die unless they are a true memory of the past. Why else do we craft tombstones or build ornate mausoleums and tall phallic structures but to say: someone who was once loved lived here on this earth.

Sipping on herbal coffee, I am trying to write a poem about this year so far and getting stuck on the second line. The thing is, I never used to have death fears. I never had death fears because I was so comfortable with Death, so cozy in those underworldly spaces I didn’t even know what it meant to live, to be literally alive and I was afraid of living if I can be so honest. I’ve had glimpses of what aliveness can feel like but this time it is all so different. This rebirth is and has been revolutionary for my own little world and I know it is a privilege to get to expand like this, to be able to be so present with it that my body and soul finally feel fed. (And what strange and almost fucked timing to experience it.) I am not naive to this living, gracious, privileged prayer. I also know that because of it, slowly but surely, there will be gigantic ripples in my work, the way I interact with the world and in these spaces I get the opportunity to be apart of.

The poem was going to be about how wild it feels to not want to die anymore, hidden among words about going to a concert and on a date. It is a method of my writing process I really enjoy, trying to create more than one meaning or storyline in a poem. The music piece is really important as there have been many shows that helped me find the courage to wake up the next day and one in particular that truly saved my life. Though my music tastes range, these concerts have mostly been of the pop punk variety. I went to all these shows because I loved the bands and it was so fun, of course, but also because deep down I wanted something to hold onto. This has helped me realize that maybe I have been more about making memories in this life than I ever could admit before, which deep down the truth ladder means that maybe I have actually always wanted to live, I just didn’t want to be in so much pain.

It is so wild to say and brings tears to my eyes every time that I can confidently say I’ve finally joined the realm of the living. I’ve crossed the watery river depths of death and have officially hopped out of the freaking boat. I feel more human than I think I have ever felt and though it’s still a bit foreign, it has been a truly exceptionally and extraordinary thing. Sure, there’s still pain of the physical chronic illness variety, emotional, spiritual, grief, heartbreak and so on, but it’s different - I wish I had a better way to explain it right now but I don’t. I do know I’ve clawed, screamed, starved, died, lived, and fought like fucking hell to get here and I’m ready to write more love letters about it (and thus things beyond). My best medicine has always been through lived experience; a shared life long, tender letter to Sacred Death and Anyone Who Feels They Might Benefit.

So, Poem #3 of 2024 has decided it can’t be a poem, instead it is this.

Love, Hannah

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This Substack is a continued love letter to Sacred Death about the complexities of life, death, and the in-between from the viewpoint of a specific Persian Death Witch. Thank you for taking the time to read this love letter with me. ~ Hannah Haddadi {they/them}

Next essay: The Favor. Coming Soon.

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