A series of illustrations for selected poems from Ada Límon’s book, The Carrying.
AFTER THE FIRE
You ever think you could cry so hard
that there’d be nothing left in you, like
how the wind shakes a tree in a storm
until every part of it is run through with
wind? I live in the low parts now, most
days a little hazy with fever and waiting
for the water to stop shivering out of the
body. Funny thing about grief, its hold
is so bright and determined like a flame,
like something almost worth living for.
WHAT I DIDN’T KNOW BEFORE
was how horses simply gave birth to other
horses. Not a baby by any means, not
a creature of liminal spaces, but already
a four-legged beast hellbent on walking,
scrambling after the mother. A horse gives way
to another horse and then suddenly there are
two horses, just like that. That’s how I loved you.
You, off the long train from Red Bank carrying
a coffee as big as your arm, a bag with two
computers swinging in it unwieldily at your
side. I remember we broke into laughter
when we saw each other. What was between
us wasn’t a fragile thing to be coddled, cooed
over. It came out fully formed, ready to run.
DREAM OF THE RAVEN
When the ten-speed, lightweight bicycle broke down
off the highway lined thick with orange trees, I noticed
a giant raven’s head protruding from the waxy leaves.
The bird was stuck somehow, mangled in the branches,
crying out. Wide-eyed, I held the bird’s face close to mine.
Beak to nose. Dark brown iris to dark brown iris. Feather
to feather. This was not the Chihuahuan raven or the fan-
tailed raven or the common raven. Nothing was common
about the way we stared at one another while a stranger
untangled the bird’s claws from the tree’s limbs and he, finally
free, became a naked child swinging in the wind.
