You Are Who I Love
You, selling roses out of a silver grocery cart
You, in the park, feeding the pigeons
You cheering for the bees
You with cats in your voice in the morning, feeding cats
You protecting the river You are who I love
delivering babies, nursing the sick
You with henna on your feet and a gold star in your nose
You taking your medicine, reading the magazines
You looking into the faces of young people as they pass, smiling and saying, Alright!
which, they know it, means I see you, Family. I love you. Keep on.
You dancing in the kitchen, on the sidewalk, in the subway waiting for the train
because Stevie Wonder, Héctor Lavoe, La Lupe
You stirring the pot of beans, you, washing your father’s feet
You are who I love, you
reciting Darwish, then June
Feeding your heart, teaching your parents how to do The Dougie, counting to 10,
reading your patients’ charts
You are who I love, changing policies, standing in line for water, stocking the food
pantries, making a meal
You are who I love, writing letters, calling the senators, you who, with the seconds of
your body (with your time here), arrive on buses, on trains, in cars, by foot to stand in
the January streets against the cool and brutal offices, saying: YOUR CRUELTY
DOES NOT SPEAK FOR ME
You are who I love, you struggling to see
You struggling to love or find a question
You better than me, you kinder and so blistering with anger, you are who I love,
standing in the wind, salvaging the umbrellas, graduating from school, wearing holes
in your shoes
You are who I love
weeping or touching the faces of the weeping
You, Violeta Parra, grateful for the alphabet, for sound, singing toward us in the
dream
You carrying your brother home
You noticing the butterflies
Sharing your water, sharing your potatoes and greens
You who did and did not survive
You who cleaned the kitchens
You who built the railroad tracks and roads
You who replanted the trees, listening to the work of squirrels and birds, you are who
I love
You whose blood was taken, whose hands and lives were taken, with or without your
saying
Yes, I mean to give. You are who I love.
You who the borders crossed
You whose fires
You decent with rage, so in love with the earth
You writing poems alongside children
You cactus, water, sparrow, crow You, my elder
You are who I love,
summoning the courage, making the cobbler,
getting the blood drawn, sharing the difficult news, you always planting the
marigolds, learning to walk wherever you are, learning to read wherever you are, you
baking the bread, you come to me in dreams, you kissing the faces of your dead
wherever you are, speaking to your children in your mother’s languages, tootsing the birds
You are who I love, behind the library desk, leaving who might kill you, crying with
the love songs, polishing your shoes, lighting the candles, getting through the first
day despite the whisperers sniping fail fail fail
You are who I love, you who beat and did not beat the odds, you who knows that any
good thing you have is the result of someone else’s sacrifice, work, you who fights for
reparations
You are who I love, you who stands at the courthouse with the sign that reads NO
JUSTICE, NO PEACE
You are who I love, singing Leonard Cohen to the snow, you with glitter on your face,
wearing a kilt and violet lipstick
You are who I love, sighing in your sleep
You, playing drums in the procession, you feeding the chickens and humming as you
hem the skirt, you sharpening the pencil, you writing the poem about the loneliness
of the astronaut
You wanting to listen, you trying to be so still
You are who I love, mothering the dogs, standing with horses
You in brightness and in darkness, throwing your head back as you laugh, kissing
your hand
You carrying the berbere from the mill, and the jug of oil pressed from the olives of
the trees you belong to
You studying stars, you are who I love
braiding your child’s hair
You are who I love, crossing the desert and trying to cross the desert
You are who I love, working the shifts to buy books, rice, tomatoes,
bathing your children as you listen to the lecture, heating the kitchen with the oven,
up early, up late
You are who I love, learning English, learning Spanish, drawing flowers on your hand
with a ballpoint pen, taking the bus home
You are who I love, speaking plainly about your pain, sucking your teeth at the airport
terminal television every time the politicians say something that offends your sense of
decency, of thought, which is often
You are who I love, throwing your hands up in agony or disbelief, shaking your head,
arguing back, out loud or inside of yourself, holding close your incredulity which, yes,
too, I love I love
your working heart, how each of its gestures, tiny or big, stand beside my own agony,
building a forest there
How “Fuck you” becomes a love song
You are who I love, carrying the signs, packing the lunches, with the rain on your face
You at the edges and shores, in the rooms of quiet, in the rooms of shouting, in the
airport terminal, at the bus depot saying “No!” and each of us looking out from
the gorgeous unlikelihood of our lives at all, finding ourselves here, witnesses to each
other’s tenderness, which, this moment, is fury, is rage, which, this moment, is
another way of saying: You are who I love You are who I love You and you and you
are who
from Split This Rock