Better Poets

i think about the people who go missing and everyone who doesn’t.

in a world where women are made afterthoughts and girls made whispers who am i to speak? i live still.

people say this hurt has made me strong but i think it has only made me vain, brittle, obsessed with survival in a land of plenty—i think this hurt has only made me weaker. it was the water that nourished me, not the lead within.

people say this hurt makes better poets but the best poets can tell you about beautiful things. the best poets can describe the shape of love, the tenderness of loss, the softness of sky—people like me, we are not better poets. we are triage. we are a stopgap measure in a world so choked in hurt it cannot wait for warm soil, fresh rains, a world so filled with poison for so long that it cannot wait for times of peace for art to flourish. we make art in times of hurt not because of the hurt but because we always need art.

and i am sorry i am not a better poet. and i am sorry that these are not better times. i am so horribly sorry to all of you that people like me need to exist, that we have to write, that we are all that can grow in this climate. i would advise you to move south, chase warmer winds, but hurricane season comes fast and stays long. god knows the weather is only getting worse. if i were a better poet, i could find something beautiful in that.

but i am not.  it only makes me sick.