There You Are by Victoria Adukwei Bulley
There You Are
Victoria Adukwei Bulley
There you are
this cold day
boiling the water on the stove
pouring the herbs into the pot
hawthorn, rose;
buying the tulips
& looking at them, holding
your heart in your hands at the table
saying please, please to nobody else
here in the kitchen with you.
How hard, how heavy this all is.
How beautiful, these things you do,
in case they help, these things you do
which, although you haven’t said it yet,
say that you want to live.
MARGINALIA
1.
How hard, how heavy the world is. Today and all the days that have come before it. How devastating, how daily the myriad of ways that we can all still break.
2.
How do you keep your head above water. How do you allow yourself to soften before the empire, whose project is to erase everyone who could ever love? Anyone who is beyond your grasp, all of them could love. Given half a chance.
3.
Ah, self. The days have been dark. But in all those days you have also been loved. That has got to count for something.
4.
How hard, how heavy the world is. But also how persistent, this yearning to live, this desire to grow around the fist of grief that is your heart.
Happy birthday, dear T., old chum. Thirty-nine today. I wish you a safe return back to yourself.
KEEP READING
SOURCE
This poem appeared in Quiet by Victoria Adukwei Bulley, published by Knopf, 2023. Shared here with deep gratitude.
DESCRIPTION
“How does one encounter meaning amid so many kinds of noise? What is quiet when it isn’t silence? Where does quiet exist—and what liberating potential might it hold? These poems dwell on ideas of black interiority, intimacy, and selfhood, and they celebrate as fiercely as they mourn. With a metaphysical edge and a formal restlessness attuned to both the sonics and the inadequacies of language, Quiet navigates the tension between the impulse to guard one’s inner life and the knowledge that, as Audre Lorde writes, “your silence will not protect you.””
ENDNOTES
- Read more poems by Victoria Adukwei Bulley • Find books by this poet • Or view my library
- Explore other works in pursuit of: wounds • being human • surviving • Or browse the index
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