Lisa Suhair Majaj Quotes

My writing process is generally a bit haphazard. I carry notebooks around to capture ideas, observations, phrases, images, chunks of freewriting. I shift to the computer to do more substantive writing and work on craft issues. I always generate multiple drafts of pieces (keeping all drafts in a separate folder), and often experiment with form in different versions to see what fits the text best.

See how we save even the broken bits of pottery,
fitting fragments together
along jagged lines to remember you

May we all fit together like this: trees, birds, sky,
people, separate elements in a living portrait,
outlines smoothed by the forgiving wash
of lingering light. Whatever the skins we live in,
the names we choose, the gods we claim or disavow,
may we be like grains of sand on the beach at night:
a hundred million separate particles
creating a single expanse on which to lie back
and study the stars. And may we remember the generosity
of light: how it travels through unimaginable darkness,
age after age, to light our small human night.

No matter how far you've come, remember:
the starting line is always closer than you think.

Today his words surround me
with the quiet intensity of growing things,
roots planted a long time ago
lacing the distances of my heart.

how a word transforms us
seedling taking delicate hold
or a weed choking the tender plants
news enters us and puts down roots

Remember the splintered staccato
of bullets against rock, the way dust rose
in the stunned aftershock of silence?

Once she could have held anything steady
and safe: a glass of tea, her brother's baby.
Now her hands shake at the weight of a fork.

Did my parents know
that what they planted,
roots against the drought,
would survive?

Part of it hides behind the headlines
where this shard of the story will never be told.

ground resilient beneath our feet, sky
glimmering
between branches of trees older than any of us.

We learned to let our faces hide
our selves, to speak our story in a private
tongue, the past a shadow in our bones.

Bless poetry books that cross oceans
in battered envelopes,
bearing small flames of words.

The distance between one breath and another
is like the miles starlight travels to reach
my dreams.

hopes
for peace: hand clasped in hand
firmer than fist on a gun
or club, hand raised in greeting
stronger than hand raised for violence