Holding Every Fallen Star's Light

from Words Like Love (audio book) by Tanaya Winder

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lyrics

Saint Francis saw me crying outside of a bookstore
near the entrance. I wouldn’t have noticed
if it hadn’t been for him tapping my shoulder
proclaiming, “This place isn’t big enough”
before he sideways stepped through

the opened glass door spilling out
Nina Simone’s blackbird voice
why you wanna fly. Signs.
I’d always believed in them.

Grounded for years after Angel took his leap
and fell unintentionally clipping my wings.
I might’ve leapt then if Francis hadn’t returned
with paper and a pen to sit beside me.

So I asked, “Francis, what do we do with the lonely?”
And he sang, “The same thing you do with pain”
Our eyes are endless wells big enough
for holding every fallen star’s light.

And I started to write all the tears I had
already cried, wondering: is it possible
for any of us to ever love, again?

credits

from Words Like Love (audio book), released December 17, 2015
poem opens with cover of Nina Simone's Blackbird.

NINA SIMONE lyrics are property and copyright of their owners.

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about

Tanaya Winder Albuquerque, New Mexico

Tanaya Winder is a writer, educator, motivational speaker, and spoken word poet from the Southern Ute, Duckwater Shoshone, and Pyramid Lake Paiute Nations. She grew up on the Southern Ute Indian reservation and attended college at Stanford University where she earned a BA in English. She has a MFA in creative writing from the University of New Mexico. You can follow her on Twitter at @tanayawinder ... more