Don't Call Us Dead: Poems

by Danez Smith

i know when the wind feels as if it’s made of hands & i feel like i’m made of water it’s you trying to save me from drowning in myself, but i can’t wed wind. i’m not water

some nights i’m new as the fire at my feet some nights i’m a star, glamorous, ancient & already extinguished.

if love is a room of broken glass, leave me to dance until my feet are memory.

some of us are killed in pieces, some of us all at once

how long does it take a story to become a legend? how long before a legend becomes a god or forgotten? ask the rain what it was like to be the river then ask the river who it drowned.