Glow by Ada Limon | Poem No. 11 (NPM2017)

Glow
by Ada Limon

In the black illegible moment of foolish want,
there is also a neon sign flashing,
the sign above the strip joint where my
second big love worked as a bouncer
and saved the girls from unwanted hands,
un-paid for hands. Thin-lipped ladies
with a lot on their minds and more on
their backs, loaded for bear, and for
the long winter’s rain, loaded for real,
and I’ve always been a jealous girl,
but when he’d come home with a 4 am
stomp in his boots and undress to bed,
he was fully there, fully in the room,
my sleeping body made awake,
awake
and there was gentleness to this,
a long opening that seemed to join us
in he saddest hour. Before now, I don’t
know if I have ever loved anyone or if
I have ever been loved, but men have
been very good to me, have seen
my absurd out-of-my-place-ness, my bent
grin and un-called for loud laugh and
have wanted to love me for it,
have been so warm in their wanting
that sometimes I wanted to love them, tpo.
And I think that must be worth somethin,
that it should be a celebrated thing,
that though I have not stood on a mountain
under the usual false archway of tradition
and chosen one person forever,
what I have done is risked everything for
that hour
that hour in the black night
where one flashing light
looks like love, I have
pulled over my body’s car and let
myself believe that the dance was
only for me, that this gift of a breathing
one-who-wants was always a gift
was the only sign worth stopping for,
that the neon glow was a real star,
gleaming in its dying, like us all,
like us all.

 

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You can get your copy of the book Bright Dead Things by Ada Limon where this poem can be found – Amazon and Book Depository

 

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