The Carrying: Poems

by Ada Limon

I wonder if she ever wanted them to speak back, looked into their wide wonderful eyes and whispered, Name me, name me.

Reader, I want to say: Don’t die. Even when silvery fish after fish comes back belly up, and the country plummets into a crepitating crater of hatred, isn’t there still something singing?

Perhaps we are always hurtling our bodies toward the thing that will obliterate us, begging for love

but some days I can see the point in growing something, even if it’s just to say I cared enough.

my whole life I’ve been under her raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel that I never got wet.

Some days there is a violent sister inside of me,

What if, instead of carrying a child, I am supposed to carry grief?

We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?

I try to say his name: Griffin, Griffin, but because language matters too, I have to tell you: I did not feel like I was laying down a lion, or a king, or an eagle, but a poor suffering son,

Perhaps the truth is every song of this country has an unsung third stanza, something brutal snaking underneath us as we blindly sing the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands hoping our team wins.

You said our Plan B was just to live our lives: more time, more sleep, travel— and still I’m making a list of all the places I found out I wasn’t carrying a child.

Would I love the smallness of a life more than the gone-ness of the mind?