Take Care
she signed each letter. I carried them with me,
never imagining one day she would be never,
be dream, be archive, be Ziploc full of ash
in a Styrofoam urn. Careful, she carried so little:
the mother who left her, the stepmother
who kept her, a cardigan bright as a cardinal,
nearly four years in a prison camp fenced by pines
whose ragged canopies tore at the sky.
From her I learned to scull diagonally
across precarious water, to write longhand
a handful of words—mizu, obāsan, sumimasen—
an artful way to arrange carnations in a glass.
Have I been careless with the past? How can we caretake
what remains? A closet stockpiled with sardines.
Silver coins squirreled in drawers. A picture of her
at New Year’s looking both delighted and sad.
For her, to care was to never be a bother.
To cake concealer over jaundice. To conceal the water
pooling under skin. I caressed her forehead
before they carried her away.
Be part of 160 years of confronting power
Every day, The Nation exposes the administration’s unchecked and reckless abuses of power through clear-eyed, uncompromising independent journalism—the kind of journalism that holds the powerful to account and helps build alternatives to the world we live in now.
We have just the right people to confront this moment. Speaking on Democracy Now!, Nation DC Bureau chief Chris Lehmann translated the complex terms of the budget bill into the plain truth, describing it as “the single largest upward redistribution of wealth effectuated by any piece of legislation in our history.” In the pages of the June print issue and on The Nation Podcast, Jacob Silverman dove deep into how crypto has captured American campaign finance, revealing that it was the top donor in the 2024 elections as an industry and won nearly every race it supported.
This is all in addition to The Nation’s exceptional coverage of matters of war and peace, the courts, reproductive justice, climate, immigration, healthcare, and much more.
Our 160-year history of sounding the alarm on presidential overreach and the persecution of dissent has prepared us for this moment. 2025 marks a new chapter in this history, and we need you to be part of it.
We’re aiming to raise $20,000 during our June Fundraising Campaign to fund our change-making reporting and analysis. Stand for bold, independent journalism and donate to support The Nation today.
Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Publisher, The Nation
