Sarah Kay

Sarah Kay, in collaboration with illustrator Sophia Janowitz, releases her debut collection of poetry featuring work from the first decade of her career. Her poems celebrate family, love, travel, and unlikely romance between inanimate objects.

No Matter the Wreckage

I just cannot express how much I'm loving this book. The poetry is immaculate; I think I'm falling in love with her words.

Mal 

how many times I said yes and yes and yes

and I didn’t say no I didn’t I never did

never mine only the walls that didn’t tumble

NO WORDS.. I am in love with these words and this book and each page.

I start quickly becoming part of your past.

But in that instant, I get to share a part of your present. 

Return my right hand to the first boy who held it,

buried under photographs of my grandfather.

Return it to my mother. It has always been hers.

Return the poetry to my first-grade teacher.

Apologize for the time I went snooping through her desk.

Return the journals to the traveling salesman,

If there is any music left, you can untie it from my throat.

All the loose skin, return it to the sun.

Return the pads of my feet to the tree in the front yard.

Let the one who loves me make a pillow of my hair.

And in case there is an empty stomach, in case an empty womb—

give these to the women made of ambulances.

Give it to the sirens’ scream, the flashing lights.

let them use the womb to nurse a tiny tulip to this earth.

Let it be a home for a mouse to crawl inside of.

Return this last place to the swift birds,

all I can think about is how I should be outside living.

all I can do is notice all there is to write about.

When I read about love, I think I should be out loving.

When I love, I think I need to read more.

On the mornings when my brother’s tired muscles

held to the pillow, my father used to tell him,

For every moment you aren’t playing basketball,

So I have learned to shape the words thank you

with my first breath each morning, my last breath every night.

When the last breath comes, at least I will know I was thankful

for all the places I was so sure I was not supposed to be.

all the loves I held, all the words I wrote.

I will be exactly where I am supposed to be.

lerie

“in new york, when a tree dies, nobody mourns that it was cut down in its prime. nobody counts the rings, notifies the loved ones. there are other trees.

we can always squeeze in one more. mind the tourists. it’s a nice place to visit, but i wouldn’t wanna live there.”

“she glows as she glides past me, tosses her hair like she has all the answers, and i wonder if i will ever be a woman like that. that summer, i learn how to wish on stars.”

“i don’t think i actually remember this day. i don’t think the scene in my head is real—it must instead be the retelling of the story that i have memorized and rehearsed—that my mind has filled in the gaps.

and yet, it would explain why, twenty-one years later, we can feel the phantom hurt inside each other; how our pains align themselves in symmetry, or in complement, like mirror selves.”

“there are so many things i would tell you if i thought that you would listen and so many more you would tell me if you believed i would understand. i hope you know that you were never meant to wear my shadow.”

“some people read palms to tell your future, i read hands to tell your past. each scar marks a story worth telling. each callused palm, each cracked knuckle, is a broken bottle, a missed punch, a rusty nail, years in a factory.”

“somewhere in between then and now i learned that every move you make echoes outwards from your body like ripples on the ocean from a skipping stone. it is what has taught me that karma is as tangible as the taste of seawater.”

No Matter the Wreckage quotes

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