by Nikita Gill
You know how to put yourself back together again, too,
just as well as they do.
Take heart that you have managed
to rebuild yourself a thousand times
after every bad day.
That is no small thing.
A Reminder from the Stars
Constellations of stars exploded
to bring you to life.
The molecules in your left collarbone
come from a different galaxy than your right.
And by defiantly existing against all odds
you are honoring their sacrifice.
The Confrontation
This year has forced me to confront myself,
Everything that felt like a door closing made me realize
How many doors have been open;
I simply haven’t walked through them.
All this ugliness I ignored,
All these wounds I refused to let heal
Because I found the pain more comfortable
Than letting go of what I knew.
This is what loneliness does.
It acts as a mirror for who you are.
And if you do not like it,
It gives you the time to change.
Loneliness says, “Peace is a thing of the imagination,
An invention you must picture to walk toward.”
Loneliness says, “Whatever peace looks like, it is yours.
Yours to find. Yours to keep. Yours to cherish.”
Small
(For S, who still loves hard)
Do you remember what
we called a crisis before this?
I remember a head full of overdue bills
and a broken-down car,
a house with no heating,
the bathroom shower always leaking,
arguing over messy housemates
who moved significant others in
and hoped we wouldn’t notice,
or the time I refused to apologize
because I didn’t want to admit I was wrong.
And now it all seems so insignificant,
so petty, so short-sightedly human.
I should have pulled you close that night,
run my fingers through the constellations
in your hair, and said, I am so sorry
that I am smaller and more selfish
than the warm, merciful love you need me to be.
On Raising Children During COVID-19
You cannot protect children by lying to them.
You cannot craft castles in the sky
and tell them this is what they’re walking into,
press the bones of fairy tales into their minds
and hope for the best when the reality is
that lying politicians with careless policies
target those who are ill and have vulnerabilities.
How they are packed in classrooms despite their fears,
and are locked into their dorms despite their lonely tears.
There is no way to hide a cannibalistic planet
from innocent eyes, and believe me I have tried.
I have tried reading stories of sleeping princesses
and flying carpets, drowned darker news
in sugary-sweet voices, given them poetry,
but life is now perpetually prosaic.
I know now that to protect them is to tell them truths.
Speak of the lies and evil out there but also
teach that inside them is a warrior made of exactitude.
“Mother” has many avatars, but in this era,
she becomes sensei, too. Raising children
to strengthen themselves from the inside
by showing them how to defeat their worst fears,
by facing all their worst wounds,
fearless carved into their souls,
as they stare at a world that is a barren field,
and respond, There is still something lovely here,
under this hard ground. Faith waiting to be grown.
The Present
As I was sad today, I went out walking again.
And some people will say that isn’t poem-worthy.
But poetry lives in everything ordinary
even walks where you pretend the trees are your family.
And though it was cold,
I bought some strawberry ice cream.
I also sang back at a blackbird’s scream
while an old man laughed delightedly and called me crazy.
I stopped at the corner park
to watch autumn’s first call,
as a show of ochre and amber
and flame leaves danced and fell.
On the way back home,
I thought of all these little happenings
and how well they helped me survive.
Despite anguish-ridden bones, I returned home feeling most alive.
In Contemplation
If there is anything I remember,
it is all the promises to friends I did not keep.
The coffee dates I didn’t make,
the wine I didn’t drink because I feared headaches,
the walks I should have taken
or the days I should have taken the later train.
And the stories we left unfinished.
Most of all, the conversations we never had.
If I had a chance to do it all over,
I would spend longer holding their hands,
even through our worst fights,
when emotion makes our voices shake,
and after, go for a walk so we can watch the mist rise over the waters,
on a cold evening as we walk by the lake.
Spring Cleaning
Throw away the knife you made from the sharp insults they gave you. Empty out the darkness that has accumulated at the bottom of your heart, all the words you refuse to say. Your heart is not a well to poison; remember that. When the secrets become too heavy to carry, whisper them to the wind to be whisked away.
As much as people say, “You do not have to do this alone,” know that there are some things you must do alone—like find each part of you that no one has known how to love, hold it as it cries, and love it anyway.
Burn every memory that does not help you grow. Destruction, too, can be necessary. When you emerge from the burning, covered in the ashes of the person you once were, think of how even the most devastating wildfires burn away debris and nourish the soil so that new trees can grow.
Is a Poet Still a Poet in Quarantine?
It’s midnight and I’m talking to the fridge again.
It never responds, only listens.
This house is not haunted
by anything except me.
I am the still-human ghost
that wanders between the rooms,
leaving traces of my humanness
to remind myself I am still alive.
Half a cup of now-cold tea.
Laundry waiting to be done.
I envy how the dust collects,
so I leave fingerprints on dusty shelves.
I apologize to the inanimate objects I bump into
like drunks do when they come home too late.
I ask myself, Can writers even be lonely?
We are used to inventing people out of thin air.
I have no excuse for being this way.
Other than the plague. And quarantine.
And all the other old-new words
we have had to become familiar with this year.
Sometimes I try to write a poem,
still trying to chase immortality.
But the poem asks, If a poet writes a poem
that no one ever reads, is she still a poet?
And I think, She is. She is still a poet,
the same way a tree is still a tree
when it falls alone in the forest.
It does make a sound.
But just like the tree,
And then she is vanished by nature
as though she was never there at all.
Affirmation for Living On
You are still here.
Despite what time tells you.
Despite the loneliness.
Despite the darkness.
Despite the pain.
Despite the gritted teeth
and drowning thoughts.
You are still here.
And that matters
more than you know.
The Dynamics of Lonely
On a midnight walk,
in a forest full of stars,
I reconsider the way
lonely works.
How it gets into the bones
of children who grow to be
adults with abandonment issues
because of an absent parent.
How it hardens
the hearts of people
who use it to block
someone out of a group.
How the cruelest places
use lonely
as a punishment through
solitary confinement.
And how we spend our days
watching clocks in forlorn buildings,
waiting for when we can go home
to the warmth of love.
All this to divide us and conquer.
A wolf left alone in the wild
is easy prey, too.
That’s why wolves live in packs.
They know that community
keeps every wolf healthier and safer,
each one fulfilling a duty to the other,
protecting and nurturing their young to be better.
Our strength then lies in numbers.
We are wildflowers, designed
to weather storms and grow in places
no one expects us, rising and thriving together.
2020 Redux
The year of this is SO my year.
The year of canceled plans and tears.
The year of working from home but living at work.
The year of I suppose lockdown has some perks.
The year of fires first, answers later.
The year of sourdough bread and no toilet paper.
The year of queuing and fevers.
The year the apocalypse told us stories instead,
and death came to live next door.
The year of breakups and breakdowns.
The year of anxiety is my new best friend.
The year of when we see each other again.
The year of death without goodbyes.
The year of if we see each other again.
The year of optimism is a destination so far away.
The year of you owe it to yourself to live through it all anyway.
Red Giant
noun
• ASTRONOMY
A very large star of high luminosity and low surface temperature. Red giants are thought to be in a late stage of evolution when no hydrogen remains in the core to fuel nuclear fusion.
• INFORMAL
The stage in which a star is holding on to its life as fiercely as it can.
When the Crisis Hit
All I could do was worry.
Panic sat inside my body,
a withering wrenching
that refused to go away.
I thought of all the things
I had left unfinished.
All the wrongs I had not righted.
All the relationships I had not mended.
Outside the storm continued heavy and unforgiving.
I sat indoors fretting, biting my nails.
Outside the squirrel buries her acorn
and will soon forget about it,
while I wonder how I have carried so many regrets
without even realizing they were there.
And it occurred to me that I, too,
knew how to bury and forget.
So instead I took my worries out
and laid them carefully on the kitchen table.
Then began the slow but rewarding task
of fixing everything that needed more love.
Picking up each worry
and examining it closely,
honoring it with the time it needed
that I never had to give it before.
In Isolation
We think of everything
we can still rely on.
The moon.
Except on a cloudy day.
The clouds.
But they are in a rush
and never stop to greet us on the way.
The trees, at least, are a certainty.
Except for when the wind knocks them down
with its forceful intensity.
The sun is a constant then.
Except when the sky
fills with clouds again.
The little stream in the woods, though?
It evaporates during the summer,
didn’t you know?
And what of the stars that still shine every night?
They are long dead, and have been
for as long as we have known this life.
The rivers, the seas, the oceans, too?
Constantly changing,
like me and you.
So what do we have to rely on then?
How do we find certainty again?
Maybe the answer is
we never had it at all.
That life never promised us constants,
but just the same chance it offers
everything we know.
To change and live and breathe
to the fullest we can
and in the best way we know how.
The Fawn
(After Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese”)
You do not have to win at a crisis.
You do not have to push yourself
to learn a new language or write a book
or take up an instrument.
Nothing will come of forcing yourself
to compete your way out of trauma.
Take this time to look at the stars.
Take this time to look at how the sky
still holds clouds that are the shape of hope.
How the dawn begins at the tips of dewy grass,
for this is where the horizon begins.
Somewhere the dappled fawn raises
her soft neck to watch the sun rise
over her meadow.
Somewhere else monarch butterflies begin
their long migration, knowing many of them
will not make it home.
Remember that you do not need to earn
your right to the precious minutes you have
on this planet. They are already yours,
like the fawn and the butterflies.
The universe beckons you to enjoy this life
it has given you through a heart
that beats to the rhythm of
its very own cosmic song.
Affirmation for Days of Self-Loathing
On the days you find the mirror hard to look at,
remember there is a myth which says
the face you have in this life
is the face of the person you loved most
in your last.
I know it’s just a myth.
But think of how much more love
you would give yourself if it were true.
Across
Across the shooting stars and galaxies / across black holes and all mad, sad things / across the joyful laughter of new parents / and the tragedy of losing someone you love / across the oceans with their sharks and secrets / and across an atmosphere both full of satellites and full of spacedust / across the devastation of a world that has known trauma better than it has known healing for too long / across the silence that brings pain and the songs that ease hearts / across the knowing and unknowing of all things / across depression, anxiety
, and panic, too / across the people we once loved and the people we will love / you were made for fiercer, better things / and I promise this grief, too, is only fleeting.
A Reminder from Smaller Beings
The bird building her home on your windowsill
has had every nest destroyed before.
The spider that is delicately weaving a silken masterpiece
has had every single thread broken before.
And despite it all,
they try again.