#the hurting kind

How much more drama

can one body take? I wake up in the morning and relinquish my dreams.
           I go to bed with my beloved. I am delirious with my tenderness.

Once, I was brave, but I have grown so weary of danger.
           I am soundlessness amid the constant sounds of war.

—Ada Limón, from ““I Have Wanted Clarity in Light of My Lack of Light”,” The Hurting Kind

And aren’t we all alone in the end?
You put your head for a moment against my chest.

Then, all I could hear was our breathing. We were
both human and animal-hearted,
bound to the blades, bound to outrun them.

—Ada Limón, from “Forgiveness,” The Hurting Kind

I will never be a mother.

That’s all. That’s the whole thought.

I could say it returns to me, watching the horses.

Which is true.

But also I could say that it came to me

as the swallows circled us over and over,

something about that myth of their tail,

how generosity is punished by the gods.

But isn’t that going too far? I saw a mare

with her foal, and then many mares

with many foals, and I thought, simply:

I will never be a mother.

—Ada Limón, from “Foaling Season,” The Hurting Kind

It is what we do in order to care for things, make them
           ourselves, our elders, our beloveds, our unborn.

But perhaps that is a lazy kind of love. Why
           can’t I just love the flower for being a flower?

How many flowers have I yanked to puppet
           as if it was easy for the world to make flowers?

—Ada Limón, from “In the Shadow,” The Hurting Kind

What is lineage,
if not a gold thread of pride and guilt? She did what?

Once, when I thought I had decided not to have children,
a woman said, But who are you to kill your own bloodline?

I told my friend D that, and she said, What if you want to kill
your own bloodline, like it’s your job?

—Ada Limón, from “The Hurting Kind,” The Hurting Kind

It’s been a year
since I’ve seen him in person, I miss how he points
to his apple trees and I miss his smooth face
that no longer has the mustache I always adored.
As a child I once cried when he shaved it. Even then,
I was too attached to this life.

—Ada Limón, from “My Father’s Mustache,” The Hurting Kind

enough of can you see me, can you hear me, enough
I am human, enough I am alone and I am desperate,
enough of the animal saving me, enough of the high
water, enough sorrow, enough of the air and its ease,
I am asking you to touch me.

—Ada Limón, from “The End of Poetry,” The Hurting Kind

All day I feel some itchiness around
the collar, constriction of living. I write

the date at the top of a letter; though
no one has been writing the year lately,

I write the year, seems like a year you
should write, huge and round and awful.

—Ada Limón, from “Not the Saddest Thing in the World,” The Hurting Kind

I take the soil in
my clean fingers and to say
I weep is untrue, weep is too
musical a word. I heave
into the soil. You cannot die.
I just came to this life
again, alive in my silent way.
Last night I dreamt I could
only save one person by saying
their name and the exact
time and date. I choose you.

—Ada Limón, from “Invasive,” The Hurting Kind

And so I have
two brains now. Two entirely different brains.
The one that always misses where I’m not,
and the one that is so relieved to finally be home.

—Ada Limón, from “Joint Custody,” The Hurting Kind

The great eye

of the world is both gaze
           and gloss. To be swallowed
by being seen. A dream.

To be made whole
           by being not a witness,
but witnessed.

—Ada Limón, from “Sanctuary,” The Hurting Kind

Years later, back from Mexico
or South America, he’d admit he was tired

of history, of always discovering the ruin by ruining
it, wrecking a forest for a temple, a temple

that should be simply left a temple. He wanted it
all to stay as it was, even if it went undiscovered.

I want to honor a man who wants to hold a wild thing,
only for a second, long enough to admire it fully,

and then wants to watch it safely return to its life,
bends to be sure the grass closes up behind it.

—Ada Limón, from “Cyrus & the Snakes,” The Hurting Kind

Mistral writes: I killed a woman in me: one I did not love. But I do not want to kill
        that longing woman in me. I love her and I want her to go on longing

until it drives her mad, that longing, until her desire is something

like a blazing flower, a tree shaking off
        the torrents of rain as if it is simply making music.

—Ada Limón, from “Banished Wonders,” The Hurting Kind

Warm rain and landlocked, I don’t deserve the image.
But I keep thinking how something saw you, something
was bearing witness to you out there in the ocean
where you were no one’s mother, and no one’s wife,
but you in your original skin; right before you died,
you were beheld, and today in my kitchen with you
now ten years gone, I am so happy for you.

—Ada Limón, from “Open Water,” The Hurting Kind

I used to like the darkest stories, the bleak

snippets someone would toss out about just how bad it could get.
My stepfather told me a story about when he lived on the streets as a kid,

how hed, some nights, sleep under the grill at a fast food restaurant until
both he and his buddy got fired. I used to like that story for some reason,

something in me that believed in overcoming. But right now all I want
is a story about human kindness …

—Ada Limón, from “A Good Story,” The Hurting Kind

lifeinpoetry:

Mistral writes: I killed a woman in me: one I did not love. But I do not want to kill
        that longing woman in me. I love her and I want her to go on longing

until it drives her mad, that longing, until her desire is something

like a blazing flower, a tree shaking off
        the torrents of rain as if it is simply making music.

—Ada Limón, from “Banished Wonders,” The Hurting Kind