We’ve Lived Inside the Fire

During the AIDS epidemic we’d bury loved ones in the morning, protest in the afternoon, and dance at night.

Not because we were unbroken.

But because we refused to be only broken.

I think about that now.

About how history keeps asking the same impossible thing:

to carry sorrow in one hand,

defiance in the other,

and still make room in our bodies for music.

Even in catastrophe,

we are asked to live.

Not later.

Not after.

But inside the fire.