Name: Bright Dead Things: Poems
ISBN: 9781571319258

Ada Limón

Bright Dead Things: Poems

Helena

— favorite excerpts —

“If you live,
you look back and beg
for it again, the hazardous
bliss before you know
what you would miss”

“What I have done is risked everything for that hour,
that hour in the black night, where one
flashing light looks like love”

“Just now, I felt like I wanted to be alone
for a long time, in a folding chair on the lawn
with all my private agonies, but then I saw you
and the way you’re hunching over your work
like a puzzle, and I think even if I fail at everything,
I still want to point out the heron like I was taught,
still want to slow the car down to see the thing
that makes it all better, the invisible gift, what
we see when we stare long enough into nothing.”

“How masterful and mad is hope.”

“Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.”