The Hurting Kind: Poems

by Ada Limon

She is a funny creature and earnest, and she is doing what she can to survive.

I’m almost certain, though I am certain of nothing. There is a solitude in this world

I cannot pierce. I would die for it.

I have, before, been tricked into believing I could be both an I and the world. The great eye of the world is both gaze and gloss. To be swallowed by being seen. A dream. To be made whole by being not a witness, but witnessed.

Bury the broken thinking in the backyard with the herbs.

We are talking about how we carry so many people with us wherever we go,

It’s cold today so the sun’s a lie.

When we are alone I sing full throated in the empty house and she meows and mewls like we’ve done this before but we haven’t done this before.

I like to call things as they are. Before, the only thing I was interested in was love, how it grips you, how it terrifies you, how it annihilates and resuscitates you. I didn’t know then that it wasn’t even love that I was interested in but my own suffering. I thought suffering kept things interesting. How funny that I called it love and the whole time it was pain.

Once, I was brave, but I have grown so weary of danger. I am soundlessness amid the constant sounds of war.