Call Us What We Carry

by Amanda Gorman

For all of us both hurting & healing who choose to carry on

History and elegy are akin. The word “history” comes from an ancient Greek verb ίστωρειν meaning “to ask.” One who asks about things—about their dimensions, weight, location, moods, names, holiness, smell—is an historian. But the asking is not idle. 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.

This book is a message in a bottle. This book is a letter. This book does not let up. This book is awake. This book is a wake. For what is a record but a reckoning?

We would Keep, We would Weep, Knowing how We would Again Give up Our world For this one.

March shuddered into a year, Sloshing with millions of lonely, An overcrowded solitude. We pray there will never be such a Precise & peopled hurt as this.

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?

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.

Perhaps that is what it means To breathe & die in this flesh. Forgive us, For we have walked This before.

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.

By Hello, we mean: Let us not say goodbye again.

Graduation day. We don’t need a gown. We don’t need a stage. 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.

Our mask is no veil, but a view. What are we, if not what we see in another.

Grief, when it goes, does so softly, Like the exit of that breath We just realized we clutched.

Since the world is round, There is no way to walk away From each other, for even then We are coming back together. Some distances, if allowed to grow, Are merely the greatest proximities.

What we carry means we survive, It is what survives us.

That’s what only words can do— Prod us toward something new & in doing so, move us closer → together.

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

Our wounds, too, are our windows. Through them we watch the world.

(& tell us: what is the hour But a rotation by which we mark our grief).

Concern is the debt We always owed each other.

Just like a skill or any art, We cannot possess hope without practicing it. It is the most fundamental craft we demand of ourselves.

Lasting meant being separate Together, proximate in our distance. To be a part of the living, We had to be apart from it, Alive but alone. It was death by survival.

Some griefs, like rivers, are uncross / able. They are not to be waded across / but walked beside.

To care is how we vow That we are here, That we are. It is how we break Free.

We destroy everything good just so it will not shame us.

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

We rouse ghosts, Primarily, for answers. Meaning we seek Ghosts for their memory & fear them for it just the same.

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

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.

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

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

To travel back in time is to remember When all we knew of ourselves was love.

In a letter I received from you two weeks ago I noticed a comma in the middle of a phrase. It changed the meaning—did you intend this? One stroke and you’ve consumed my waking days. —Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton

But bloodshed in war is no misfire. Perhaps casualty means that war itself Is the accident, unmistakably a mistake, Our big, fat, bloody oops!

Hate only survives when hosted in humans. If we are to give it anything, Let it be our sorrow & never our skin.

Never forget that to be alone Has always been a price for some & a privilege for others.

It means not wearing the mask that would save you, for that would mean taking off one’s privilege.

Anyone who has lived Is an historian & an artifact, For they hold all their time within them. Reconciliation is in this record we make.

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

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.

Children have been taught— America: without her, democracy fails. But the truth is: America without her democracy fails.

We ignite not in the light, but in lack thereof, For it is in loss that we truly learn to love.

There is a justice in joy, Starlit against all that We have ended, endured & Entered. We will not stir stones. We shall make mountains.

Children understand: Even grime is a gift, Even what is mired is miraculous, What is marred is still marvelous.

We have learned our true names— Not what we are called, But what we are called To carry forth from here.

Somehow, we’ve weathered and witnessed A nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.

But while democracy can be periodically delayed, It can never be permanently defeated.

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

So while once we asked: How could we possibly prevail over catastrophe? Now we assert: How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?