Just down the street from
where you are I am sitting at a cafe
believing in you. Thinking of you
has helped me put certain things
in perspective. For instance I wish
for I to record only its encounter
with you. You are the one who
rehinges all the names: your face
daisies at the sun, you glory
up the bare hill rallying the squirrels,
your voice trucks through the traffic
running reckless down the roads,
you catch the circling snow in your
sleepy lashes. What is my language
really for? Not to languish on the page
unheard & unlived, but to hold another
person, to address them—it’s true none
of my poems would matter
if I didn’t have the words to reassure,
to cheer, to delight, to soothe, to free
you. To make room for us, for how
we will be present together. I promise
to write to you through disaster, in
the face of violences sudden & slow
—I promise to never let you go.
Bridget Huh is an MFA candidate in poetry at Cornell University. Her poetry and criticism have appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, Prism International, The Ex-Puritan, and Canthius. Huh grew up in Toronto and is the winner of the 2023 Vallum Poetry Award.
I found it here: https://thewalrus.ca/poem/
