Ada Limón

We’ll say unbelievable things
to each other in the early morning—

I’d choose the moon, always the sister moon.

Cold, comely queen of the sky.

It’s been a long time

since I’ve wanted to die,

it makes me feel

like taking off

my skin suit

and seeing how

my light flies all

on its own

She sends me an article from a recent National Geographic that says,

Sharks bite fewer people each year than
New Yorkers do, according to Health Department records.

Then she sends me on my way. Into the City of Sharks

I’ve come from the lacing patterns of leaves,
I do not know where else I belong.

Perhaps we are always hurtling our bodies toward
the thing that will obliterate us, begging for love
from the speeding passage of time

What if, instead of carrying
a child, I am supposed to carry grief?

What if I want to go devil instead? Bow
down to the madness that makes me.

What
would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?
What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
No, to the rising tides.

I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.