cento for all the seawater in my lungs

Liaa Fernandez

I want to start with the world of dreams.

For just an instant they discard the grey

and take on your shape,

willing me to believe you can bend time.

Memories keep coming back

until they make me wonder,

if the ground holds our memory

can you find a way into the air

& the river & the spring? Then, will you say to me,

I am already on my way to you.

Sometimes, I remember how love revised our world

and think I did not ask for you to be gone;

but perhaps my grief doesn’t know that

what died didn’t stay dead.

Maybe I am on my way to you,

still. In the neighborhood where I go

to revisit the primeval music of loss,

to be young again means you’re alive.

(you were alive.)

with language by Poupeh Missaghi, Lee Woo-jung, Jennifer Co, Noreen Ocampo, Fatimah Asghar, Sasha Penano, Sanna Wanni, Aracelis Girmay, Chance the Rapper, José Olivarez, Armi Millare, Aria Aber, Taylor Swift, and Ardyel Lim

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