by Julie Weiss
Hold on. You´re a rabbit, clever
and bold, galloping free through
tomorrow´s boundless grasslands.
Hold on. You´re the most extraordinary
lotus, blooming through cracks
in your country´s polar ice caps.
Hold on. They may have grounded
your body, but your mind
can fly a thousand glorious kites
in the rising winds of resistance.
Your will, sharp enough to slice
a prison guard´s insults into fluff.
Hold on. Right now, you may feel
more like a beetle climbing
a mountain under a crush of boots
than anything human, but you´re not
alone. You´re the song we sing
when the notes in our throat
have lumped impossibly together.
You´re the rainbow colors we use
to airbrush our hope across the sky.
You’re the poem we bellow at every
demonstration. Imagine! Your beauty
flowing in epic proportions.
You´re our brightest star, the one
that anchors us to our place
in the universe. Hold on. Without you,
we´d all be hurled deep into space.
Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection, and two chapbooks, The Jolt and Breath Ablaze: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, Volumes I and II. Her second collection Rooming with Elephants was published in February, 2025. She was a finalist for Best of the Net, won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award, and was a finalist for the Saguaro Prize. Recent work appears in ONE ART, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Gyroscope Review, and is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, The Indianapolis Review, MER, and SWWIM. She lives with her wife and children in Spain.
