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Quote by Joy Harjo

“We get frantic in our loving. The distance between Santa Fe and Albuquerque shifts and changes. It is moments; it is years. I am next to you in skin and blood and then I am not. I tremble and grasp at the edges of myself; I let go into you.”

Quote by Joy Harjo

Work

She Had Some Horses

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Author

Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo is an American Indian poet born on May 9, 1951. Her work blends poetry, music, and visual art, exploring Native American culture, identity, and the female experience. Harjo is known for her unique voice and profound emotional expression, and her poetry has won numerous literary awards. more

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“There were so many things I wanted to tell you. Or rather, I wished to have things that I wanted to tell you. What a thing, to be with you and have no words for it. What a thing, to be outcast like that. And then everything unfastened. It was like something was always dissolving inside you— Already it's hard to remember how you used to comb your hair or how you tilted your broad face in green shade. Now what seas, what meanings can I place in you?”

“I refuse the definitions of love ⁣ in dictionaries and philosophy,⁣ for today I know love.⁣ I had sought you for years, ⁣ but find that you were always the seeker⁣ and I the sought. ⁣ I suddenly appeared ⁣ reverent before you⁣ to bear witness to your beauty, ⁣ to dance in your silky attention,⁣ but you were always my wild destiny, ⁣ my heart’s pilgrimage—⁣ the meeting place of all my joy⁣ and self-forgetting.⁣ When I first loved you, ⁣ life for me had just begun.⁣ I look forward to so much with you—⁣ our togetherness in a world of wounds, ⁣ our children awaiting birth.⁣ I look forward to so much life with you, ⁣ and yet, I am perfectly content ⁣ with this moment here.⁣ It matters not to me if I die ⁣ before finishing this poem,⁣ for today I know love.⁣ For today,⁣ I am free.”