Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude

by Ross Gay

probably rehearsing some stupid thing I said or did

I was a little tipsy on the dance of the velvety heart rolling in my mouth

this is as delicate as we can be in this life practicing like this

the magic dust our bodies become casts spells on the roots about which someone else could tell you the chemical processes, but it’s just magic to me,

when he knew he could make you happy just by being a little silly and sweet.

I’ll call it patience; I’ll call it joy, this,

and everything makes me mildly or more hungry—

I am trying, I think, to forgive myself for something I don’t know what.

I wish I could tell you, truly, of the little factory in my head: the smokestacks chuffing, the dandelions and purslane and willows of sweet clover prying through the blacktop.

I wish I could tell you how inside is the steady mumble and clank of machines. But mostly I wish I could tell you of the footsteps I hear, more than I can ever count, all of whose gaits I can discern by listening, closely. Which promptly disappear after being lodged again, here, where we started, in the factory where loss makes all things beautiful grow.

I can see myself trying to add some gaudy flourish to this memory to make of it a fantasy

to be many such shames stitched together like a quilt

with all its just legible patterning which could be a thing heavy and warm to be buried in or instead might be held up to the light where we see the threads barely holding so human and frail so beautiful and sad and small from this remove.

I swore when I got into this poem I would convert this sorrow into some kind of honey with the little musics

I wish one single thing made sense. To which I say: Oh get over yourself. That’s not the point.

and huge windows through which light pours to wash clean and make a touch less awful what forever otherwise will hurt.

unwittingly a habit of slathering mortar everywhere, almost by accident,

for fear of what might forever slip in and be felt;

Nothing savage, nothing cruel or vicious, not a bird in sight—just sadness. Which is to say, in other words, just being alive.

turning my head away from what wreckage

which too I will do to you, so that none of us will ever die terribly, but stay always like this, lips and fingers blushed purple, the faint sugar ghosting our mouths, beneath the tree inside me, which is the same tree now grown inside you: the three of us snugged in the canopy on our tippy-toes, gathering fruit for good.

It might make you want to stay alive even,

Thank you what does not scare her in me, but makes her reach my way. Thank you the love she is which hurts sometimes.

I am sorry. I am grateful. I just want us to be friends now, forever. Take this bowl of blackberries from the garden. The sun has made them warm. I picked them just for you. I promise I will try to stay on my side of the couch.

I want so badly to rub the sponge of gratitude over every last thing, including you, which, yes, awkward, the suds in your ear and armpit, the little sparkling gems slipping into your eye. Soon it will be over,

what do you think this singing and shuddering is, what this screaming and reaching and dancing and crying is, other than loving what every second goes away? Goodbye, I mean to say. And thank you. Every day.