Carrying You – Gwen Hilton

September 20, 2025

I carry you inside me. When I carry you inside me I realize I can’t carry only you. Carrying you is interrupted by everyone that comes with you. I carry them inside me. I acknowledge the weight of the many inside me. This is not Deleuze. This is my slumped shoulder. This is my paunch. This is me carrying Sarah Kane in my body at 4 AM and then 5 AM. This is me carrying Virginia Woolf in the shower. Realizing I carried Sarah Kane in the night as I carry Virginia. Seeking the purest version of you inside me only distills everyone else. When David Foster Wallace wrote Infinite Jest he obscured himself so thoroughly that he was everywhere. I know a guitar player like that. I know a janitor like that. I carry them inside me. I am learning how to stand up with you inside me. I am learning how to stand up with me inside me. I am learning how to let me be me inside me all the way to the edge of my skin, outside of my skin, across my vision, across the globe. Then I will carry everyone inside me and the weight of the world will somehow be less. I carry you inside me. It is you that makes me realize I have anything in me at all.