Ada Limón

I’d choose the moon, always the sister moon.

Cold, comely queen of the sky.

It’s been a long time

since I’ve wanted to die,

it makes me feel

like taking off

my skin suit

and seeing how

my light flies all

on its own

I’ve come from the lacing patterns of leaves,
I do not know where else I belong.

Perhaps we are always hurtling our bodies toward
the thing that will obliterate us, begging for love
from the speeding passage of time

What if, instead of carrying
a child, I am supposed to carry grief?

What if I want to go devil instead? Bow
down to the madness that makes me.

What
would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?
What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
No, to the rising tides.

I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.

In my world of brittle needles,
I was building my house of ice,

Your body I thought belonged to me,
until I learned about belonging,
was sublime, looming over me
like a gauntlet, and because
you were a challenge, I rose
from the cold to meet you.