inside you, open

This is the very first poem in the wonderful poetryisnotaluxury book, which came out last year and is beautiful and perfect because the person or people who run that account have impeccable taste. This poem is an old favorite, and also beautiful and perfect, but I can't lie: it inevitably reminds me of two fics that thefourthvine titled from it, back in the day. In this new era of Hockey RPF-adjacent fandoms, my Sid/Geno roots go deep, and for obvious reasons, I have recently been doing quite a bit of rereading. I also just love this poem.

Look at the birds. Even flying
is born

out of nothing. The first sky
is inside you, open

at either end of day.
The work of wings

was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every falling thing.

—Li-Young Lee, "One Heart," from Book of My Nights (BOA Editions, 2001), and in this case also from Poetry Is Not a Luxury: Poems for All Seasons (Washington Square Press, 2025).