No Matter the Wreckage

by Sarah Kay

I will love you with too many commas, but never any asterisks.

I will wake you up early with my heavy heartbeat. You will say, Can’t we just sleep in, and I will say, No, trust me. You don’t want to miss a thing.

FUCK THIS BOOK IS GONNA BE GOOD

You do not need to look very hard to find your shadow here. Your fingerprints are on these pages. So many of your footsteps in the snow.

MRS. RIBEIRO

THIS IS THE ONE, pg18

My world was the size of a crayon box, and it took every color to draw her.

This line legit made me cry

Clothes. Shirts. Pants. Shoes. Socks. Saris. Animals. Cat. Dog. Bird. Fish. Llama. Look how much I’ve learned.

We were dandelion seeds released to the wind, she asked for no return. We are saplings now. With gentle hands.

I tell them, Listen. Listen to one another like you know you are scholars. Artists. Scientists. Athletes. Musicians. Like you know you will be the ones to shape this world. Show me how many colors you know how to draw with. Show me how proud you are of what you have learned. And I promise I will do the same.

There are some things you cannot learn in New York City. There are places where fishnets do not mean stockings, where the learning happens in between moments, like after a wave passes, and you break the surface gasping for air.

You are my favorite stick of dynamite. You are the opposite of a rubber band. There are so many things I would tell you if I thought that you would listen and so many more you would tell me if you believed I would understand.

I hope you know that you were never meant to wear my shadow. In fact, I’m the one who always steals your shoes. But is that my sweatshirt you’re wearing? It’s okay, you can keep it. I won’t tell your secret. In fact, it really does look better on you.

@my sister

I love hands like I love people. They are the maps and compasses with which we navigate our way through life, feeling our way over mountains passed and valleys crossed; they are our histories.

And somewhere in between then and now irony slipped its way into my vocabulary. Laughter became the antidote for guilt. Sacrifice grew to be a Band-Aid for shame. And unnecessary death became the nightmare that rode me piggyback.

Somewhere in between then and now I learned that every move you make echoes outwards from your body like ripples on the ocean from a skipping stone. It is what has taught me that Karma is as tangible as the taste of seawater.

I am watching parts of me evaporate like sidewalk water. This wet grey, this nighttime dew, gone before morning.

my mother is a recipe for warm throats and belly laughs.

his mother and daughter strung together with tightrope hands, fingers that look like his own. And somewhere in California a place I once stood is burning.

There is a beast in my veins that was birthed by my father. It is quiet, it sleeps through most nights. Tonight, sir, my tail twitches in the darkest caves. Be careful, darling. Your footsteps land heavy here. Your racket will wake the dragons.

It does not matter how long we have been kept in cages. It does not matter how strong your gravity is. We were always meant to fly.

South Africa. We sing a song of strength. We go on like a rolling train forever. We never let gravity become too familiar. Because we were always meant to fly.

And then there are days when sleeping is the hardest. The fight of muscle against world becomes so constant, that surrendering to slumber doesn’t promise nearly enough relief.

My pendulum has swung so far past its point, it has gotten wrapped around me, throws me back and forth from my own neck.

You love the city, when you love each other. And when you wake up in a city that you don’t recognize, and the traffic lights blink angry, it is not because the city has grown cold. It is not because your hands no longer fit in his. It is because it is someone else’s turn to lean out her window into the cold cold morning and say, Baby, look at all those traffic lights, blinking their way into dawn.

THE MOVES You can tell she is counting exit signs. You can tell she has left her shoes by the door, laces already tied. Leaving is an easy art to learn. But the advanced steps—the pirouettes and arabesques are difficult to master. This is how I disappear in pieces. This is how I leave while not moving from my seat. This is how I dance away. This is how I’m gone before you wake.

Pg. 74

You can only fit so many words in a postcard. Only so many in a phone call. Only so many into space, before you forget that words are sometimes used for things other than filling emptiness.

Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Repeat the same mistakes over and over, and you don’t get any closer to Carnegie Hall. Even I know that.

When I meet you, in that moment, I am no longer a part of your future. I start quickly becoming part of your past. But in that instant, I get to share a part of your present. And you get to share a part of mine. And that is the greatest present of all.

So if you tell me I can do the impossible, I will probably laugh at you. I don’t know if I can change the world. Yet. Because I don’t know that much about it.

We have both learned the art of capture. Maybe we are learning the art of embracing. Maybe we are learning the art of letting go.

We spelled love G-I-V-E.

It sounds silly now, with you so far on your way to the future, and me so very here.

but getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.

Because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I’ve tried.

Okay, there’s a few heartbreaks that chocolate can’t fix. But that’s what the rain boots are for. Because rain will wash away everything, if you let it.

There’ll be days like this, my mama said. When you open your hands to catch, and wind up with only blisters and bruises;

Because there’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s swept away.

You will put the wind in win(d)some, lose some. You will put the star in starting over and over. And no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute, be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life.

AND FOUND

This is my favorite, pg100

I promise to tidy up before company arrives, wouldn’t want my socks and daydreams all over the carpet.

He is asking a question now and no one has answered it yet. So you lower your eyes from the plaster and say, The twenty-first, I think, and he smiles and says, Oh, cool, and you smile back, and you cannot stop your smiling, oh, you cannot stop your smile.

the first boy—the one who tasted like peach vitamin water and sweat—he kissed me as though I was made of tears and he had never seen the sea before.

Things happen to God’s perfect aesthetic. Noses are mountain slopes, cheeks are fields, lips gape and pull, morph and stretch, we are no longer faces, we are landscapes. I was not kissing a boy, I was kissing America. And America tasted like peach vitamin water and sweat.

You are looking for mountains to climb. I am looking for the words to a poem I can’t remember.

TODAY’S POEM Sometimes the writing should be put on hold: a boy who smells like springtime.

Pg121

Some of us are born chasing disaster. From the moment we enter this world screaming, we are looking for lightning, the raw of our bodies always searching for cleaver hands.

Some of us are born chasing poetry. When you searched for the words, was it her voice who spoke them?

THE TYPE

Another fav, pg 130

You are a woman. Skin and bones. Veins and nerves. Hair and sweat. You are not made of metaphors. Not apologies. Not excuses.

Being loved is not the same thing as loving. When you fall in love, it is discovering the ocean

If I get to heaven before you do, I’ll make a hole and pull you through. I’ll write your name on every star. And that way the world won’t seem so far.