north star

so many feathers
have fallen from a courier pigeon heart
lost somewhere in a wind headed
in favor of the north star.

like the nordic vikings of old
it believes that
something insignificant and suspended
in a mote of light will guide it home.

i have been lost at sea for as long as i can remember.
every buoy is just a piece of me
dropping off and blinking
to remind people how easy it is to get lost out here.

some nights
i can hear the sirens
singing in my medicine cabinet
so i fall asleep next to it some nights.

my parents found me and i guess it makes sense
that they’d put me in therapy.
a bottle of antibiotics had been sprawled across the floor.
not lethal or anything, but i was young and dumb enough to believe they were.

i told a doctor id tried before
but could never do my homework
and didn’t know what worked and what didn’t so she asked
“How often do you do your homework?”

i shrug my shoulders and say
“not at all”
so she wonders
“do you want to die? or disappear?”

even now i lay in bed
and i wonder what it is that she means by that.
certainly
they are the same?

turns out they’re not
because i have become obscure;
a spector and veil
floating aimlessly down empty streets with dead lights.


they say that
home is where the heart is.
my heart is wherever i can pick up a pen
or boxing gloves.

fighting and writing
are both as poetic as can be.
i can throw a straight or
write a sonnet just as easily as the other.

these things are as natural as breathing.
i cannot help but to breathe the crisp
ocean air
every time i take flight.

i am thrown off course
often.
both when my hands touch paper
or when my hands touch skin; intimate or otherwise.

it reminds me that
perhaps
there are other worlds than these;
ones where i needn’t fly to where my home is not.

they say that
home is where the heart is.
my heart is wherever
i can stretch my arms and smile.