ada limón | bright dead things

I want to give you something, or I want to take
something from you. But I want to feel the exchange,
the warm hand on the shoulder, the song coming out
and the ear holding on to it.

—from HOW FAR AWAY WE ARE

And I never knew survival
was like that. If you live,
you look back and beg
for it again, the hazardous
bliss before you know
what you would miss.

—from BEFORE

The hens do not love him. Neither do the oranges.
 
But they survive together: fuel for the future:
 
A picture of a feather without the bird,
A picture of an orange without the tree,
A picture of a shadow without a boy.

—from A TRICK OF THE LIGHT

When he drove me to school, we decided
it would be a good day if we saw the blue heron
in the algae-covered pond next to the road,
so that if we didn’t see it, I’d be upset. Then,
he began to lie. To tell me he’d seen it when
he hadn’t, or to suppose that it had just
taken off when we rounded the corner in
the gray car that somehow still ran, and I
would lie, too, for him. I’d say I saw it.
Heard the whoosh of wings over us.
That’s the real truth. What we told each other
to help us through the day: the great blue heron
was there, even when the pond dried up,
or froze over; it was there because it had to be.

—from THE GREAT BLUE HERON OF DUNBAR ROAD

Sometimes, you just want
something so hard you have to lie about it,
so you can hold it in your mouth for a minute,
how real hunger has a real taste.

—from LIES ABOUT SEA CREATURES

Isn’t it funny? How the cold numbs everything but grief.
If we could light up the room with pain,
we’d be such a glorious fire.

Clock: turn back, turn back—
everything you’ve dialed to black.

What was it I wanted?
The captain to sail safely? To land alive and, like survival, loved?

—LASHED TO THE HELM, ALL STIFF AND STARK