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.

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.

Even now handshakes & hugs are like gifts,

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

There is no simple way to hurt. The real damage is dammed, disrupted. :Inaudible:

Add -ship to the end of a world & it transforms our meaning.

Let no one again Have to begin, love, or end, alone.

The past is one Passionate déjà vu,

The hardest part of grief Is giving it a name. The pain pulls us apart, Like lips about to speak. Without language nothing can live At all, let alone Beyond itself.

Sometimes The fall

Just makes Us More Ourselves.

What would we seem, stripped down Like a wintered tree. Glossy scabs, tight-raised skin, These can look silver in certain moonlights. In other words, Our scars are the brightest Parts of us.

Life is not what is promised, But what is sought. These bones, not what is found, But what we’ve fought. Our truth, not what we said, But what we thought. Our lesson, all we have taken & all we have brought.

When we tell a story, We are living Memory.

Marianne Hirsch posits that the children of Holocaust survivors grow up with memories of their parents’ trauma; that is to say, they can remember ordeals that they did not experience personally.

Trauma is like a season, deep & dependable, a force we board our windows against. Even when it passes, it will wail its wild way back to our porch.

Postmemory is not the solo but the choir, a loyal we, to be not above others, but among them.

Poke the scar until it speaks. This is how every memory starts.

There is nothing so agonizing, or so dangerous, as memory unexpressed, unexplored, unexplained & unexploded. Grief is the grenade that always goes off.

Perhaps tomorrow cannot wait to be today.

Something in us repents every time a new friend doesn’t tell us their given name, preempting our tongue to lay a violence toward that too.

Heritage is passed not in direct recollection but through indirect retelling.

Sometimes, we must call our monster out from under the bed to see he/she/it carries our face.

Some will hate our words because they burst from a face like ours.

slur is a sound that beasts us.

pandemics, everything is scarce except for grief.

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.

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

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

The truth is, one education under desks, Stooped low from bullets. Soon comes the sharp plunge When we must Ask where our children Shall live & how. & if.

Loss is the cost of loving, A debt more than worth every pulse & pull. We know this because we have decided to Remember.

Contrary to popular belief, it’s not easy for us to lie. Even the body has tells, even our blood runs toward truth.