Friday, October 8, 2021

You Are Who I Love by Aracelis Girmay

You Are Who I Love

 
You, selling roses out of a silver grocery cart
 
You, in the park, feeding the pigeons
You cheering for the bees
 
You with cats in your voice in the morning, feeding cats
 
You protecting the river   You are who I love
delivering babies, nursing the sick
 
You with henna on your feet and a gold star in your nose
 
You taking your medicine, reading the magazines
 
You looking into the faces of young people as they pass, smiling and saying, Alright! which, they know it, means I see you, Family. I love you. Keep on.
 
You dancing in the kitchen, on the sidewalk, in the subway waiting for the train because Stevie Wonder, Héctor Lavoe, La Lupe
 
You stirring the pot of beans, you, washing your father’s feet
 
You are who I love, you
reciting Darwish, then June
 
Feeding your heart, teaching your parents how to do The Dougie, counting to 10, reading your patients’ charts
 
You are who I love, changing policies, standing in line for water, stocking the food pantries, making a meal
 
You are who I love, writing letters, calling the senators, you who, with the seconds of your body (with your time here), arrive on buses, on trains, in cars, by foot to stand in the January streets against the cool and brutal offices, saying:
YOUR CRUELTY DOES NOT SPEAK FOR ME
 
You are who I love, you struggling to see
 
You struggling to love or find a question
 
You better than me, you kinder and so blistering with anger, you are who I love, standing in the wind, salvaging the umbrellas, graduating from school, wearing holes in your shoes
 
You are who I love
weeping or touching the faces of the weeping
 
You, Violeta Parra, grateful for the alphabet, for sound, singing toward us in the dream
 
You carrying your brother home
You noticing the butterflies
 
Sharing your water, sharing your potatoes and greens
 
You who did and did not survive
You who cleaned the kitchens
You who built the railroad tracks and roads
You who replanted the trees, listening to the work of squirrels and birds, you are who I love
You whose blood was taken, whose hands and lives were taken, with or without your saying
Yes, I mean to give. You are who I love.
 
You who the borders crossed
You whose fires
You decent with rage, so in love with the earth
You writing poems alongside children
 
You cactus, water, sparrow, crow        You, my elder
You are who I love,
summoning the courage, making the cobbler,
 
getting the blood drawn, sharing the difficult news, you always planting the marigolds, learning to walk wherever you are, learning to read wherever you are, you baking the bread, you come to me in dreams, you kissing the faces of your dead wherever you are, speaking to your children in your mother’s languages, tootsing the birds
 
You are who I love, behind the library desk, leaving who might kill you, crying with the love songs, polishing your shoes, lighting the candles, getting through the first day despite the whisperers sniping fail fail fail
 
You are who I love, you who beat and did not beat the odds, you who knows that any good thing you have is the result of someone else’s sacrifice, work, you who fights for reparations
 
You are who I love, you who stands at the courthouse with the sign that reads NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE
 
You are who I love, singing Leonard Cohen to the snow, you with glitter on your face, wearing a kilt and violet lipstick
 
You are who I love, sighing in your sleep
 
You, playing drums in the procession, you feeding the chickens and humming as you hem the skirt, you sharpening the pencil, you writing the poem about the loneliness of the astronaut
 
You wanting to listen, you trying to be so still
 
You are who I love, mothering the dogs, standing with horses
 
You in brightness and in darkness, throwing your head back as you laugh, kissing your hand
 
You carrying the berbere from the mill, and the jug of oil pressed from the olives of the trees you belong to
 
You studying stars, you are who I love
braiding your child’s hair
 
You are who I love, crossing the desert and trying to cross the desert
 
You are who I love, working the shifts to buy books, rice, tomatoes,
 
bathing your children as you listen to the lecture, heating the kitchen with the oven, up early, up late
 
You are who I love, learning English, learning Spanish, drawing flowers on your hand with a ballpoint pen, taking the bus home
 
You are who I love, speaking plainly about your pain, sucking your teeth at the airport terminal television every time the politicians say something that offends your sense of decency, of thought, which is often
 
You are who I love, throwing your hands up in agony or disbelief, shaking your head, arguing back, out loud or inside of yourself, holding close your incredulity which, yes, too, I love          I love
 
your working heart, how each of its gestures, tiny or big, stand beside my own agony, building a forest there
 
How “Fuck you” becomes a love song
 
You are who I love, carrying the signs, packing the lunches, with the rain on your face
 

You at the edges and shores, in the rooms of quiet, in the rooms of shouting, in the airport terminal, at the bus depot saying “No!” and each of us looking out from the gorgeous unlikelihood of our lives at all, finding ourselves here, witnesses to each other’s tenderness, which, this moment, is fury, is rage, which, this moment, is another way of saying: You are who I love   You are who I love  You and you and you are who



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