Call Us What We Carry

We've learned that quiet isn't always peace.

We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another We seek harm to none and harmony for all Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true: That even as we grieved, we grew That even as we hurt, we hoped That even as we tired, we tried

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.

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

Lost as we feel, there is no better Compass than compassion. We find ourselves not by being The most seen, but the most seeing.

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 Goodbye, we truly mean: Let us be able to say hello again.

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

There is power in being robbed & still choosing to dance.

Loss is the cost of loving

Words matter, for Language is an ark. Yes, Language is an art, An articulate artifact. Language is a life craft. Yes, Language is a life raft.

When day comes, we ask ourselves: Where can we find light In this never-ending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade. We braved the belly of the beast, We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, And the norms and notions of what ‘just is’ Isn’t always justice. And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it, Somehow, we do it. Somehow, we’ve weathered and witnessed A nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished. We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl, descended from slaves and raised by a single mother, can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one.

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.

Only when we're drowning do we understand how fierce our feet can kick.

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

we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation Our blunders become their burdens But one thing is certain: If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left with

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

We were told to never use I when writing, because eliminating this voice makes arguments legitimate. But we realize there is nothing that convinces like the self does - our life, our body & its beating, proving it's own jagged point. Tell me what is more powerful than the unerased.

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.

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

We write Because you might listen.

Change is made of choices, & choices are made of character.

The only way to correctly predict The future is to pave it, Is to brave it.

The Spanish Influenza did not originate in Spain. In fact the first recorded case was in the United States, in Kansas, on March 9th, 1918. Beware the Ides of March. But because Spain was neutral in World War I, it did not sensor reports of the disease to the public. To tell the truth then, is to risk being remembered by its fiction. Countless countries laid blame to one another. What the US called the Spanish Influenza, Spain called the French Flu, or the Naples Soldier. What Germans dubbed the Russian Pest, the Russians called Chinese Flu.

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

The question isn't if we can weather this unknown, But how we will weather this unknown together.

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

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.

Please. Do not ask us who we are. The hardest part of grief Is giving it a name.

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.