Page 45 - NS 2024

But it isn’t all sorrow I promise.
This is important and must be said before the cut off.
I need to make myself clear
Look at me in my eyeballs and don’t let me be misconstrued
We make friends in three minutes or ask for 3 months and trust in the outcome Quirks for our candies and rules about doors (neither is ridiculed)
Poems and presents and woven seas of colour.
Shared meals and held hands and a bop in our step when we hop down the street. We have family everywhere and we never stop trying to find each other.
And yes, sorrow sometimes
But our Names have never and will never be apophatic.
We don’t make ourselves strong out of sadness and we know that Rage can be fuel but never an Engine.
Joy is the spark that starts the riot
Gathered for yoga on Saturday morning and we strengthen our arms so we can throw bricks well into our eighties.
We will throw bricks because we believe in our deserved happiness
If it was all sorrow the streets would be quiet
If it was all sorrow we would go extinct.
Many of us are dead already. Victims of suicide. Of murder, epidemic or exposure.
We carry our dead and they are heavy
Defined by Joy but we will not put down our grief because remembrance begets lightness and lightness breathes color
The ever weaving tapestry, the loom of countless lives Our bright picture is stunning and strange
Fireproof and fortified and impervious to tears.
And I am sorry about all the blood in the poem.
I’m sorry for talking about death when I set out to talk about Joy. I wanted to be honest
One day the happiness will speak for itself.
It won’t be despite anything
One day there won’t be any more blood in the poems.