Don't Call Us Dead: Poems

by Danez Smith

history is what it is. it knows what it did.

please, don’t call us dead, call us alive someplace better.

we say our own names when we pray. we go out for sweets & come back.

i’ll plant a garden on top where your hurt stopped.

do you know what it’s like to live on land who loves you back?

paradise is a world where everything is sanctuary & nothing is a gun.

i was his secret until i wasn’t alive until not. outside our closet i found a garden. he would love it here. he could love me here.

i spent my life arguing how i mattered until it didn’t matter.

dead is the safest i’ve ever been. i’ve never been so alive.

hallelujah! today i rode past five police cars & i can tell you about it

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

do i think someone created AIDS? maybe. i don’t doubt that anything is possible in a place where you can burn a body with less outrage than a flag