Dear Mr. Leonard:

Though you are not dead--yet, I have written a eulogy:

I want to thank you for your life, your work, and your death. Your death, for bringing us together in celebration--of our love for you, and of our love for your work.

In life, I never would have gotten this near to you, i would never have gotten this near to your lovers. I feel as if you've fathered me, all of us with different mothers, and now we come together to rmbr the father, the lover we never knew.

I want to kiss you and kiss you until I swallow you. But I could never swallow you, no matter how hard i kiss you. I want to kiss your soft disintegrating lips, and crumple you like paper dolls. You are so vulnerable and brittle. Your shrivelled up cock and balls.

I want you because you're white, male, and dead; and i'm not. I want you because i can't have you. I've wanted to fall into you, the rubbery flaps of your skin and flesh, between your body and arms that used to be firm, like my current young lover.

I want you to examine my naked body. paint me. You can tell me things i never knew. I want to show you my scars, and ask you to tell me their story. I want you to tell me the story behind every scar and every sunspot, because your story is better than mine. But you're dead now.

I love you so much that i have to hate you; i see you lying in your coffin, immobile, dead. This is such a joke.

It is so easy to love you, in your death.

I have never loved you personally. But i know your work by heart. It's unfortunate that the world will never hear your songs or read your stories again. But you have said enough.

How come your writing lifts me off the floor, into the air, and unevens my breath? What is the secret to your narrative?

I write this, and my intention is not to meet you, for you to read this, or to seek me out and meet me. I write this to lay you back into the earth. I shall burn your words shortly.

Why did you die? why were you born so soon? why do you hate me?

Oh, Mr. Leonard, do you have a wife who loves you unconditionally? I imagine you don't; I imagine your tortured lonely soul tossing in bed, lover and lover after lover, highlighting what you lack. So you keep searching. I want to tell you that I love you. But you don't know what love is, and neither do I.

There exists a nostalgia for a past, a fantasy that never existed. It is an inevitable betrayal when you love someone who never existed, courting for their love.

this isn't personal, but all I want is for you to love me. Save me from the scorching sun, the screeching crows, the thistles in my crown. Please take me home with you, and take my stories too.

What's really sad is i'm not asking you to love me, all you have to do is to love my stories?

I do love yours, did you want me to love you too?

Because of a few things you said...

Many women have wanted to teach you love, to give you love. You poor lonely boy, drink of my milk, and suckle my breasts, and you will know, she said. I drank of my mother's milk but i never learned. We all betray our mothers when we die. She who only loved us, and lived for us, and all we could return to her was to leave, to die. goodbye, my mother. I have found father.