Sarah Kay

It felt like the whole room was communicating, there is room for you.

The universe has already written the poem you are planning on writing.

And this is why you can do nothing but point at the flock of starlings whose bodies rise and fall in inherited choreography, swarming the sky in a sweeping curtain that for one blistering moment forms the unmistakable shape of a giant bird flapping against the sky.

It is why your mouth forms an, oh, that is not a gasp, but rather the beginning of, oh, of course, as in, of course, the heart of a blue whale is as large as a house.

with chambers tall enough to fit a person's standing.

Of course, a fig is only possible when a lady wasp lays her eggs inside a flower, dies, and decomposes the fruit evidence of her transformation.

Sometimes the poem is so bright, your silly language will not stick to it.

Sometimes the poem is so true, nobody will believe you.

I am a bird made of birds.

My blue heart a house you can stand up inside of.

I am dying here.

Inside this flower, it is okay.

It is what I was put here to do.

Take this fruit.

It is what I have to offer.

It may not be first or ever best, but it is the only way to be sure I lived it all.

So I have a friend named Kava Akbar, who is also my co-author of a column that three of us write for the Paris Review online.

And one time Kava posted this photo that he had found on the Internet, which was that scientists had dissected the heart of a blue whale and hung it from the ceiling.

And when they did that, it's how they figured out that the heart of a blue whale is so big that each chamber of the heart is big enough for a human to stand up inside of.

And when Kava shared this photo, he shared it with the caption, this is just a reminder that the universe has already written the poem you were planning on writing.