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Kindle Notes & Highlights
March shuddered into a year,
We slept the days down. We wept the year away, Frayed & afraid.
every step we’ve taken Has required more than we had to give.
Even now handshakes & hugs are like gifts, Something we are shocked to grant, be granted.
& what could we have done differently? We only have one way to not die.
It will be a blessing if our children Never fully grasp what It took to come to this.
The births in isolation. Let no one again Have to begin, love, or end, alone.
It took us losing ourselves To see we require no kingdom But this kinship. It is the nightmare, never The dream, that shocks us awake.
Just like a skill or any art, We cannot possess hope without practicing it.
To be a part of the living, We had to be apart from it, Alive but alone. It was death by survival.
What a marvelous wreck are we.
[Locked down, the animal may perform the behavior in the same way over & over, at the same time over & over, in the same place, over & over, with the same results. What we’re describing is insanity. Or 2020.]
The oppressor will always say the oppressed want their overcrowded cage, cozy & comforting as it is;
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.
rage is our right. It teaches us it is time to fight.
In the face of injustice, Not only is anger natural, but necessary, Because it helps carry us to our destination.
The truth is, one nation under guns. * * * This republic was bred shady. Country of guns & germs & steal- ing land & life.
one education under desks, Stooped low from bullets.
We ignite not in the light, but in lack thereof, For it is in loss that we truly learn to love. In this chaos, we will discover clarity. In suffering, we must find solidarity.
So ensure that this ache wasn’t endured in vain: Do not ignore the pain. Give it purpose. Use it.
When this ends, we’ll smile sweetly, finally seeing In testing times, we became the best of beings.
A yoked-out eternity For that needle to pierce our arm. At last: a pain we asked for.
There is no one way to count who & what counted most to us in that dark. These are but some of the things we overcome. But let us come to be more than their sum.
