Call Us What We Carry

by Amanda Gorman

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.

There truly is a unity That requires no “they” For us to be threatened by. This is the very definition of love. We’ve never had to hate a human To hug another, never had to be fearful To be fond of the hearts beating out to us.

It is the nightmare, never The dream, that shocks us awake.

Grief is the grenade that always goes off.

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

In short, a slur is a sound that beasts us.

We can only fully understand language by what doesn’t survive it.

Courage must cost us something, or else it is worth nothing at all.

Words, too, are a type of combat, for we always become what we refuse to say.

What is called “great” Is often grievous & gruesome, But what is good is worth our words. Good trouble. Good fight. Good will. Good people.

There is no such thing as gentle war. There is no peace That can’t be flung aside. Our only enemy is that which would Make us enemies to each other.

In pandemics, everything is scarce except for grief.

Writing, truth-telling to one another, is an act of hope-making when hope is hardest found. What place have we in our histories except the present.

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.

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.

Some were asked to walk a fraction / of our exclusion for a year & it almost destroyed all they thought they were.

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.

You will be told now is not the time For change to begin, Told that we cannot win.

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

This is more than protest. It’s a promise.

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.

We write Because you might listen. We write because We are lost & lonely, & you, like us, Are looking & learning.

We do not hope for no reason. Hope is the reason for itself.

The truth is, there is joy In discarding almost everything— Our rage, our wreckage, Our hubris, our hate, Our ghosts, our greed, Our wrath, our wars, On the beating shore. We haven’t any haven For them here.

We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, And the norms and notions of what “just is” Isn’t always justice.

That even as we grieved, we grew, That even as we hurt, we hoped, That even as we tired, we tried. That we’ll forever be tied together.

In this truth, in this faith, we trust. For while we have our eyes on the future, History has its eyes on us.

If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, Then love becomes our legacy, And change, our children’s birthright.

For there is always light, If only we’re brave enough to see it, If only we’re brave enough to be it.

Every day this very ground spoils beneath us, for we are bringing to all the ends of the Earth the end of all the Earth.

When told we can’t make a difference, we’ll still make a sound.