^{—after Gwendolyn Brooks}

My wild grief didn’t know where to end.
Everywhere I looked: a field alive and unburied. 
Whole swaths of green swallowed the light. 
All around me, the field was growing. I grew out 
My hair in every direction. Let the sun freckle my face. 
Even in the greenest depths, I crouched 
Towards the light. That summer, everything grew 
So alive and so alone. A world hushed in green. 
Wildest grief grew inside out.

I crawled to the field’s edge, bruises blooming 
In every crevice of my palms. 
I didn’t know I’d reached a shoreline till I felt it 
There: A salt wind lifted 
The hair from my neck. 
At the edge of every green lies an ocean. 
When I saw that blue, I knew then: 
This world will end.

Grief is not the only geography I know. 
Every wound closes. Repair comes with sweetness, 
Come spring. Every empire will fall: 
I must believe this. I felt it 
Somewhere in the field: my ancestors 
Murmuring Go home, go home—soon, soon. 
No country wants me back anymore and I’m okay.

If grief is love with nowhere to go, then 
Oh, I’ve loved so immensely. 
That summer, everything I touched 
Was green. All bruises will fade 
From green and blue to skin. 
Let me grow through this green 
And not drown in it. 
Let me be lawless and beloved, 
Ungovernable and unafraid. 
Let me be brave enough to live here. 
Let me be precise in my actions. 
Let me feel hurt. 
I know I can heal. 
Let me try again—again and again.

The shadow I cast when I stand  
in the sun has disappeared
beneath the trees, shadows
of crows over the roof
of the post office, or the field
of clover they fly above, throats
open, stitching the world
together with a fine thread,
doing the work of belonging.
Nothing is too trivial to love
enough to walk toward it,
your footsteps leaving 
badges on the earth, even
the nettles that chafe
your ankles worthy of love,
sparks of pain, like your
shadow, that prove
you’re alive.