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There had to be something more spiritual than the everyday struggle for bread, and meat, and clothes, and the growing of vegetables, and the preparation of pickles and jams for the winter, I guessed. There had to be something more than my parents used to do.

And this is how I discovered the poets of my town. I have been fascinated with the melody of rhymes since early childhood, but my true poetry "calling" came to life at about the age of 16, and I started attending the poetry workshops of my high school. For my parents' horror, I have to admit.

"It is just a stage", my father used to say. "She will be a good girl again, it is just because she is sixteen".

"What did they do to her?", my mother kept weeping. "Was she reading all these books just to become so mean? And this notebook, and this murmur to herself."

"You, miserable people! You will never understand how empty, how unimportant, how materialistic you are!", I used to cry out loud, lonely and neglected again, seeing ugliness everywhere in my home. Then I used to scribble verses.

Poets were the only people able to appreciate me. Most of them were chain-smokers and drank heavily, but that was also a part of poetry, wasn't it? Wasn't poetry the same drink for the soul as wine for the body? They both helped the struggling spirit escape from the reality where nothing important happened and middle-aged parents were falling asleep in front of the television set.

I would have been seriously hurt in my perception as being "a poetess" with my allergy to alcohol, if it wasn't Leda. She didn't drink also, but she was the most distinguished presence among the poets. She used to wear white clothes and lived in a small pink house with a friendly, supportive husband. Every detail around her spoke of beauty and fine style. I used to spend hours in her romantic home, drinking coffee in a white cup, eating home-baked sugar cookies and talking with her about the misery of the world outside where people were obsessed so much with material stuff. And who cared about the soul? About beauty? About imagination? About art? About poetry? Yes, we, the poets, were messiahs, and that was our destiny to educate these blind people, to teach them idealism, to make the world better.

Then we used to read poems. Shame to me, but I wasn't very productive (and I hate to admit it, also not very talented). Very often I said that I didn't have anything new, and only Leda was reading. And how much I wanted that her poems were as powerful as her beauty!

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