Poetry needed to speak for me today.
The message in this poem is in essence what I wanted to say but couldn’t find the words. Now we all have the words, thanks to Aracelis Girmay.
My invitation is to sit back and read. Instead of feeling rushed or bored, trust and let yourself stay to the very end. Keep going, this is for you. Yes, YOU.
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
-- “You Are Who I Love” by Aracelis GirmayThe words “You are who I love” has been tumbling around in my head, striking me as very differently than the more familiar “I love you.”
“I love you” centers the speaker’s feeling.
“You are who I love” shifts the focus to the receiver. It names the love rather than merely expressing it.
Saying “I love you” describes a state, like “I’m hungry.”
Saying “you are who I love” tells a story, like “this is what I‘m hungry for.”
___
One of my favorite things in life is waking up knowing I want to do a thing that I had no idea I wanted to do when falling asleep the night before. Like being gifted an assignment from the gods, I feel compelled to honor that delicious thing--if at all possible--without question. If I can’t do it right away, I will get there before falling asleep that night.
Today, that waking thing was wanting to find words that captured humans in their most everyday-loveable living. The search for Aracelis Girmay’s words was the assignment, and the gift was the feeling her words guided me through and the place where I landed.
So I had to share.
Along with the people flashing in your mind’s eye, I hope that reading Aracelis Girmay’s words radiated a warmth that opened your chest in a defiant and resolved way.
If so, keep these feelings today.
If not, maybe read the poem again with more attention to your experience from the neck down. Let your feelings remind you to stay truly alive and not just functionally performing.
Because what we’re going through is, as Rebecca Solnit said, “like an autoimmune disorder, a part of the body politic attacking the whole.” I’m suggesting that now is the time for the body to be a temple that we fully occupy and never leave--as opposed to one we halfheartedly visit only on Sundays.
Happy Sunday, or whatever day it is where you are.
LINKS:
ART - EXPLORATION
Listen and watch Indian Australian band Glass Beams live in KEXP radio studios.
I’ve just rediscovered the art of Sandra Yagi. Look!
Photoessay. Tour the beautiful art-and-light-filled home of Roxanne Gay and Debbie Millman. NYT Gift link.
Video. Waiting for the Barbarians: spoken performance by Laurie Anderson, accompanied by The Knights Music Ensemble and The Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Inspired by the poet C.P. Cavafy.
Livestream: The great moose migration in Sweden — Slow tv. I love to tune in and if no moose is in sight, remind myself to view the beauty that IS there. The camera automatically switches between gorgeous, calming locations in forests and along rivers and streams. This link should take you to “English language, current view” (whatever the moose are doing right now) and you can also select a view that begins at the start of the recording. Also, the chat has a great moderator who answers questions and offers links and other tools that make the most of the experience. The Swedes have really taken the time to bring the world into their world in such a meaningful way.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Recently, there have been some miraculous Conservative Conversions: David Brooks has apparently joined the resistance (NY Times Gift Link) and Bill Kristol seems to embrace the “Abolish ICE movement”
“America runs on Adderall. From Silicon Valley to Wall Street, through prep school and grad school, in ad agencies and magazines, many of our most powerful minds are flying on prescription-grade speed. And all these uppers do a lot more than increase productivity...” How Adderall Changed America.
INSPIRATION - SUPPORT
How to help someone who has fallen out of their wheelchair written by someone who fell out of their wheelchair. Read if you’re a human with arms who sometimes goes places (like the street) where someone in a wheelchair might be. It’s brief and important.
Somatic Flashbacks are more common than memory-based flashbacks and are nothing like those depicted in films. What are they and how do we recognize them?
How to make someone feel seen and heard using Validation Skills.
May you be pampered in a certain way like:
TOOLS - RESOURCES
Ask Nature. A field guide to the natural world. A beautiful, fascinating, eye-opening tool that gets me thinking differently and helps me stay grounded.
Free trainings for bystanders, for de-escalation and more. I also recommend a basic CPR training.
Quick video with nervous system targeted deescalation techniques. How to use your nervous system to help regulate and/or avoid disregulating someone else’s.
A resource library. Study guides for immigrant rights, challenging white and male supremacy, etc.
That’s it. Enjoy.
You Are Who I Love,
