Call Us What We Carry

by Amanda Gorman

Someone will remember us, this, even if in another time, even if by any other name.

We wrap our arms around ourselves, as if we can possibly hold the whole of who we are within us—everything that makes us this unearthly speck we are. Perhaps tomorrow cannot wait to be today.

To tell the truth, then, is to risk being remembered by its fiction.

It’s said that ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is this: a vine that sneaks up a tree, killing not by poison, but by blocking out its light.

No matter what we’re told, violence is never little.

After we fight Someone we love, We offer a question: Are we okay? Are we good?

The word peace shares history With pact. That is to say, harmony Is a tomorrow we agree on.

You know, don’t you, Even those you never knew remember you.

This poem & its pain are both imagined & as real as we are. That is to say, through some fictions we find fact; in some fantasies we discover ourselves & then some. Even without living it, a memory can live on in us. The past is never gone, just not yet found.

Grief, like glass, can be both a mirror & a window, enabling us to look both in & out, then & now & how. In other words, we become a window pain. Only somewhere in loss do we find the grace to gaze up & out of ourselves.

Never forget that to be alone Has always been a price for some & a privilege for others.

What it is to bow our heads & make room for someone else’s pride. That ceding of the walkway Was the concession of the world To another’s age-old white rite of passage.

How we are moved says everything About what we are to each other.

Why it’s so perturbing for privileged groups to follow restrictions of place & personhood. Doing so means for once wearing the chains their power has shackled on the rest of us.

Some were asked to walk a fraction / of our exclusion for a year & it almost destroyed all they thought they were. Yet here we are. Still walking, still kept.

To be kept to the edges of existence is the inheritance of the marginalized.

Non-being, i.e., distance from society—social distance—is the very heritage of the oppressed. Which means to the oppressor, social distance is a humiliation. It is to be something l...

Conjoined, not canceling, Expansion, not erasure. It is only then that we can understand How our distance from our worst selves Is centuries & yet We have not been displaced. Yes. We have gone further than we’ve come.

History is fractured & fractal. Even when we’ve succumbed, We have not surrendered. We might fall. We might rise, Distant but undisplaced, Traveling further than we shift. What matters most is that We find each other In the lit-up space between.

But the point of protest isn’t winning; It’s holding fast to the promise of freedom, Even when fast victory is not promised.

By now, we understand That white supremacy & the despair it demands Are as destructive as any disease.

So when you’re told that your rage is reactionary, Remind yourself that rage is our right. It teaches us it is time to fight. In the face of injustice, Not only is anger natural, but necessary,

Our goal is never revenge, just restoration. Not dominance, just dignity. Not fear, just freedom. Just justice.

Together, we envision a land that is liberated, not lawless. We create a future that is free, not flawless. Again & again, over & over, We will stride up every mountainside, Magnanimous & modest. We will be protected & served By a force that is honored & honest. This is more than protest. It’s a promise.

Our war has changed. Whoever said we never die In our dreams obviously Has never been Black. Sometimes the whole dusk pulls us down.

This republic was bred shady. Country of guns & germs & steal- ing land & life. O say can we see The blood we stand on, Shining below us Like a blood-slick star. What we might’ve been if only we’d tried. What we might become, if only we’d listen.

When we must Ask where our children Shall live & how. & if.

What can we call a country that destroys Itself just because it can? A nation that would char Rather than change?

The world still terrifies us. We’re told to write what we know. We write what we’re afraid of.

Only then is our fear Made small by what we love.

Under a suture of sun, We sense ourselves stir, Slowly, sweetly, As if for the first time. This nearly tore us apart. Yes, indeed. It tears us to start.

Maybe there is no fresh wisdom, Just old woes, New words to name them by & the will to act.

Somewhere a reader reads this. Does resolution exist if it is ongoing, unwritten, unread? The part of the narrative where we see our hero as they see the world. We understand “normal” in terms of how we believe a story begins. Inspirational, insightful, inside us. There is always someone missing from the music.

Laden with what we’ve lost, We are led By what we love. As far away as it is, The late sun looks Peelable in our palm. That is to say, distance Renders all massiveness Carriable. It is the carrying That makes memory mutual, The pain both private & public.

How we are moved says everything About what we are to each other & what are we to each other If not everything.

We are enough, Armed only With our hands, Open but unemptied, Just like a blooming thing. We walk into tomorrow, Carrying nothing But the world.

That even as we grieved, we grew, That even as we hurt, we hoped, That even as we tired, we tried.

The hill we climb, if only we dare it: Because being American is more than a pride we inherit— It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.

For while we have our eyes on the future, History has its eyes on us.

So while once we asked: How could we possibly prevail over catastrophe? Now we assert: How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?

our air, breathable; birds, built & blurred on a breeze; trees heaving huge sighs into the heavens; our children, giggling & gilded in grass. Earnest for the first time, we must earn this turned Earth back. Now we are begged to save it. We screech with kids who must fix the world because braving it is no longer enough. The youth will save us, they say. But even that is its own release.