The Sun and Her Flowers (16 page)

if you have never

stood with the oppressed

there is still time

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lift them

the year is done. i spread the past three hundred
sixty-five days before me on the living room carpet.

here is the month i decided to shed everything not deeply committed to my dreams. the day i refused to be a victim to the self-pity. here is the week i slept in the garden. the spring i wrung the self-doubt by its neck. hung your kindness up. took down the calendar. the week i danced so hard my heart learned to float above water again. the summer i unscrewed all the mirrors from their walls. no longer needed to see myself to feel seen. combed the weight out of my hair.

i fold the good days up and place them in my back pocket for safekeeping. draw the match. cremate the unnecessary. the light of the fire warms my toes. i pour myself a glass of warm water to cleanse myself for january. here i go. stronger and wiser into the new.

there is

nothing left

to worry about

the sun and her flowers are here.

and then there are days when the simple act of breathing leaves you exhausted. it seems easier to give up on this life. the thought of disappearing brings you peace. for so long i was lost in a place where there was no sun. where there grew no flowers. but every once in a while out of the darkness something i loved would emerge and bring me to life again. witnessing a starry sky. the lightness of laughing with old friends. a reader who told me the poems had saved their life. yet there i was struggling to save my own. my darlings. living is difficult. it is difficult for everybody. and it is at that moment when living feels like crawling through a pin-sized hole. that we must resist the urge of succumbing to bad memories. refuse to bow before bad months or bad years. cause our eyes are starving to feast on this world. there are so many turquoise bodies of water left for us to dive in. there is family. blood or chosen. the possibility of falling in love. with people and places. hills high as the moon. valleys that roll into new worlds. and road trips. i find it deeply important to accept that we are not the masters of this place. we are her visitors. and like guests let's enjoy this place like a garden. let us treat it with a gentle hand. so the ones after us can experience it too. let's find our own sun. grow our own flowers. the universe delivered us with the light and the seeds. we might not hear it at times but the music is always on. it just needs to be turned louder. for as long as there is breath in our lungs—we must keep dancing.

rupi kaur is a #1
new york times
bestselling author and illustrator of two collections of poetry.
she started drawing at the age of five when her mother handed her a paintbrush and said—draw your heart out. rupi views her life as an exploration of that artistic journey. after completing her degree in rhetoric studies she published her first collection of poems
milk and honey
in 2014. the internationally acclaimed collection sold well over a million copies gracing the
new york times
bestseller list every week for over a year. it has since been translated into over thirty languages. her long-awaited second collection
the sun and her flowers
was published in 2017. through this collection she continues to explore a variety of themes ranging from love. loss. trauma. healing. femininity. migration. revolution. rupi has performed her poetry across the world. her photography and art direction are warmly embraced and she hopes to continue this expression for years to come.

-
about the author

the sun and her flowers
is a

collection of poetry about

grief

self-abandonment

honoring one's roots

love

and empowering oneself

it is split into five chapters

wilting. falling. rooting. rising. and blooming.

-
about the book