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It is when you are asking about something that you realize you yourself have survived it, and so you must carry it, or fashion it into a thing that carries itself.
There were no words for what we witnessed. When we talked to each other, Our sentences were stilted & stalled as a telegram. Hope we are doing well/ As we can be/ In all these times/ Unprecedented & unpresidented.
Goodbye, by which we say to another— Thanks for offering your life into mine. By Goodbye, we truly mean: Let us be able to say hello again.
Anxiety is a living body, Poised beside us like a shadow. It is the last creature standing, The only beast who loves us Enough to stay.
There is nothing more worrisome Than a titan who believes itself Separate from the world.
We are walking beside our ancestors, Their drums roar for us, Their feet stomp at our life. There is power in being robbed & still choosing to dance.
We might not be fully sure of all that we are. & yet we have endured all that we were.
Shall this leave us bitter? Or better? Grieve. Then choose.
It is easy to harp, Harder to hope.
Grief commands its own grammar, Structured by intimacy & imagination.
Like a page, we are only legible When opened to one another.
there is no better Compass than compassion. We find ourselves not by being The most seen, but the most seeing.
Every day we are learning How to live with essence, not ease. How to move with haste, never hate.
Just like a skill or any art, We cannot possess hope without practicing it.
Our scars are the brightest Parts of us.
To love is to be liable To ourselves & each other.
Will we forget, erase, censor, distort the experience as we live it, so that it cannot be fully remembered? Or will we ask, carry, keep, share, listen, truth-tell, so it need not be fully relived? It is the moral difference between collective amnesia & collective remembrance.
There is nothing so agonizing, or so dangerous, as memory unexpressed, unexplored, unexplained & unexploded. Grief is the grenade that always goes off.
The “Spanish” influenza did not originate in Spain. In fact, the first recorded case was in the United States—in Kansas on March 9, 1918 (bewareth March). But because Spain was neutral in World War I, it did not censor reports of the disease to the public.
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.
The first step to scapegoating a whole people is to delegitimize their value—to call them a host to nothing but horror.
Sometimes, we must call our monster out from under the bed to see he/she/it carries our face.
At times even blessings will bleed us.
In pandemics, everything is scarce except for grief.
Hate is a virus. A virus demands a body. What we mean is: Hate only survives when hosted in humans. If we are to give it anything, Let it be our sorrow & never our skin. To love just may be The fight of our lives.
The past is never gone, just not yet found.
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. It is to surrender the one difference that kept them separate & thus superior.
Meanwhile, for generations we’ve stayed home, [segre]gated, kept out of parks, kept out of playgrounds, kept out of pools, kept out of public spaces, kept out of outside spaces, kept out of outer space, kept out of movie theaters, kept out of malls, kept out of restrooms, kept out of restaurants, kept out of taxis, kept out of buses, kept out of beaches, kept out of ballot boxes, kept out of office, kept out of the army, kept out of hospitals, kept out of hotels, kept out of clubs, kept out of jobs, kept out of schools, kept out of sports, kept out of streets, kept out of water, kept out of
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To be kept to the edges of existence is the inheritance o...
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Black lives matter, No matter what. Black lives are worth living, Worth defending, Worth every struggle. We owe it to the fallen to fight, But we owe it to ourselves to never stay kneeling When the day calls us to stand.
Riots are red Violence is blue We’re sick of dying How ’bout you
Ravaged In Pandemic. Rifled Innocent People. Razed Irreplaceable Persons. Look alive, everyone.
Despite how hard we’ve prayed, Anyone becomes prey
The truth is, one nation under guns.
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.
America: without her, democracy fails. But the truth is: America without her democracy fails.
The truth is, we are one nation, under ghosts. The truth is, we are one nation, under fraud. Tell us, honestly: Will we ever be who we say.
We’re optimistic, not because we have hope, But because only by being optimistic can hope Be ours to have.
Who are we, if not What we make of the dark.
When we greet it, when we listen to our loss, When we indeed let it live, It will not shrink in size, But lighten in load.
Sometimes diving Into the deep inside us Is the only way We rise above it.
We will not stir stones. We shall make mountains.
We do not hope for no reason. Hope is the reason for itself.
To begin again Isn’t to go backwards, But to decide to go.
We disembark both beside & beyond Who we were, who we are.
Even endings end
We have learned our true names— Not what we are called, But what we are called To carry forth from here. What do we carry, if not What & who we care most for.
We walk into tomorrow, Carrying nothing But the world.
We are striving to forge our union with purpose, To compose a country committed To all cultures, colors, characters, And conditions of man.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true: That even as we grieved, we grew, That even as we hurt, we hoped, That even as we tired, we tried.
