The Hurting Kind: Poems

by Ada Limon

No one wants to be a pretty thing all the time. But no one wants to be the weed.

But I do not want to kill that longing woman in me. I love her and I want her to go on longing until it drives her mad, that longing, until her desire is something like a blazing flower, a tree shaking off the torrents of rain as if it is simply making music.

And so I have two brains now. Two entirely different brains. The one that always misses where I’m not, and the one that is so relieved to finally be home.

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.

It is not much to go on, I know.