Call Us What We Carry

by Amanda Gorman

We began to lose words As trees forget their leaves in fall.

A rhetoric that works in red. We teach children: Leave a mark on the world. What leads a man to shoot up Souls but the desire to mark Up the globe? To scar it & thus make it his. His intention to be remembered, Even if for a ragged wreckage. Kids, unmark this place. Leave it nothing Like the one we left behind.

We find the rhetoric of reunion By letting love reclaim our tongues, The tip of the teeth. Our hearts have always Been in our throats.

By Goodbye, we truly mean: Let us be able to say hello again.

Since the world is round, There is no way to walk away From each other, for even then We are coming back together.

We were mouthless for months. We could’ve been grinning. We could’ve been grimacing. We could’ve been glass. & so, we must ask: Who were we beneath our mask. Who are we now that it is trashed.