Читать книгу Generation F - Girls Write Now - Страница 55
ОглавлениеThis poem is about finding your place, and feeling so strongly that you belong there that it seems like you’ve been there before. It is about the connections we share to our past, previous generations, and the homes that we choose for ourselves.
Standing in the Great Hall,
I know
I have been here before.
I heard the echoes
when they were voices.
Smelled the ink and the anxiety
of the stamp poised to grant entry,
to give permanence.
Or something like it.
I had a different face then.
A different posture.
I was carried in the blood
of my great-great-grandparents,
tucked between
the fibers of their coats,
folded into the spaces
left by the letters they erased and
the new ones written in,
making them blend,
making them American.
I am familiar with starting over.
That is a language I still know.
The assonance of your few possessions
in one trunk—they mean
everything and nothing.
You cling to them,
but wonder if you could bear that loss.
You are almost tempted
to pronounce it—to
let go of the handle and walk away.
Perhaps you would forget.
Perhaps you would carry that weight
forever, like you carry your great-great-granddaughter,
like you carry the letters cut from your name.
Silent. Heavy.
The city was different then.
And it is the same.
I was passing through.
But now, I let go
of the handle of my suitcase.
I open the trunk and unpack,
allowing myself to say the word—
Permanence.
Or something like it.
I look at the city
from this island, like they did.
My face is my own.
The letters spell a name wholly different
from the one in the book,
the one etched on the wall.
I trace the letters with my finger.
I say them aloud.
I have been here before.
