It’s A Lot by Jon Sands
It's A Lot
Jon SandsIt’s a lot to open your eyes in the morning,
to taste your own unbrushed mouth, to hear
thousands of voices and believe your own.
It’s a lot to lose even one friend,
to not be heard, or to be heard, and still
be paranoid that people hate you. It’s a lot
to put your heart on another’s train tracks,
to not take a loved one hostage with your own fear,
with what you don’t want to know about yourself.
Once, to explain how cold I’d become,
I confessed my love to a friend who didn’t
love me back. I felt the words leave my chest,
genuine, desperate, gone. It was a lot.
ConEd bills, job applications, small talk.
A lot to shake hands, raise eyebrows, debate
about basketball, eye contact over beer.
It’s a lot to hide behind a new shirt, old jeans,
to grow a beard, or eat a whole pizza,
to practice restraint, or to jog, voluntarily.
It’s a lot to remember a birthday,
let alone purchase a card and mail it,
to love people as imperfect as you are.
It’s a lot to not get your feelings hurt,
to let emotions pass through you,
to see your mother look like your grandmother.
It’s all very necessary, but it’s still a lot—
to say I’ve been good as a mannerism,
to say I haven’t as a fact. It’s a lot,
as well, to include the good things,
to not make a caricature of your sadness,
to only get your jump shot so good, and still
to have it fall left, to attend the dentist. It’s a lot
to be a good husband, an inattentive uncle,
to not know how to respond to an email—
so to say nothing. It’s a lot, maybe the most,
to say nothing. Yes.
To say nothing, and therefore continue
holding that nothing inside you.
That is by far the most.
MARGINALIA
1.
I know that ache: to tell someone you love them just to feel something move inside your own chest again. A way to thaw.
2.
How do I carry all the rage? All the grief? It almost feels unbearable to hope. And on some days to carry even joy seems like a betrayal. How dare I.
3.
Even goodness has its paperwork.
4.
But what if most of what we can do is just hold everything and still show up. Have you brushed your teeth today. Have you called your mom. Have you replaced the faucet thingie you said you would last week. Have you said I love you.
5.
I think you know what it takes to be here. To witness all the news on TV, and still do errands, still check your email, still talk to friends, still have dinner. To live with all that and still open your eyes, it’s a lot. It really is.
6.
But I think you know what it takes to be here.
KEEP READING
SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in We Were Not Alone: A Community Building Art Works Anthology edited by Hari Alluri, and Seema Reza, published by Community Building Art Works, 2021. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)
DESCRIPTION
“Since 2010, Community Building Art Works has been building community in military hospitals through workshops led by professional artists. In that time, we’ve learned that more voices make for stronger community. In March 2020, in response to the COVID-19 crisis, we moved our workshops at Walter Reed and Ft Belvoir online and opened them up to everyone, regardless of military connection. We formed the United Against Silence Collective, made up of the extraordinary poets and artists who lent their time and shared their wisdom. We read poems that inspired us, poems that offered an opening for us to begin to find words for our collective and individual griefs, joys, and transformations. At “the altar of the laptop,” as Army veteran and community member Anne Barlieb calls it, people from around the world met weekly to write and cry and laugh, to hold one another across space.
The poems included in this anthology are written by members of the collective and members of the community. They are the poems that were essential to our survival, poems that built a growing online family and community of support. The poems contained here reminded us that We Were Not Alone. We hope they remind you, also, that you are not alone.” (Source)
ABOUT JON SANDS
Jon Sands is a winner of the National Poetry Series, selected for his second poetry collection, It’s Not Magic (Beacon Press, 2019). He is the facilitator of the Emotional Historians workshop, a series of generative writing classes with well over 1000 registrants to date. His work has been featured in The New York Times, published in The Rumpus, The Millions, Cortland Review, The Brooklyn Rail, The Poetry Foundation website, and The Best American Poetry. He is a curator for SupaDupaFresh,… (more)
ENDNOTES
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