After the Fire
You ever think you could cry so hard
that there’d be nothing left in you, like
how the wind shakes a tree in a storm
until every part of it is run through with
wind? I live in the low parts now, most
days a little hazy with fever and waiting
for the water to stop shivering out of the
body. Funny thing about grief, its hold
is so bright and determined like a flame,
like something almost worth living for.
Notes
Where Carver’s cobweb makes mortality suddenly perceptible, Ada Limón’s After the Fire stays inside what that knowledge can do to the body: crying until emptied, fever, trembling water, and grief held with the frightening intensity of a flame. Grief acquires its own desire to persist; when loss becomes large enough, we can begin organizing ourselves around the wound, until the very thing exhausting us also gives shape and intensity to being alive. For October, decay moves inward. The body is shaken through like a tree in a storm, and what remains afterward must learn the unfamiliar shape of having survived. #AdaLimón #Fire #Decay #Poetry #Grief