Consequential Daydreams

I lost my cartographer

A few miles back

Now all I have to guide me

Are superstitions

And lights in the dark

They're not stars

The sky's been black

At least three years now

Longer if you believe the boatswain

They bob with the waves

Glint off the surface

But alight no paths

Could be followed in a lifetime

My maps prove useless

Scattered dots on an empty page

Adrift in a sea of being

Absent history of place

Quiet frightens me

My days are filled with noise and

Momentum and distraction

Ceaseless labour to ensure there is never a vacant minute

Waiting amidst the tumult for us to get acquainted

Stillness collects my debris

The wailing of a thousand untreated griefs

Everything my body can't forget

The inevitability of flesh

I sit alone, my chest tightens

A hollow scratching rattles my lungs

And echoes high in my ribcage

Memories stampeding unbidden from my heart to my head

I'm terrified

I outrun the fragments of myself that need me most

I'm the nomad now

My home was lost

Devoured long before I knew it

The cuckoo bird and the ghost that could be me

In the aftermath I float and flutter

On the wind and my hollow bones

Between worlds built with strength

Not simlarly undermined

I scavenge their great halls for a nest

Their low places for a place to rest

But every story, every song

Shakes my ribs with an emptied howl

There is no room for a person

In the margins of someone else's book

Living amongst the scraps of their meaning

My home was hijacked; sharpened against me

Cannibals and cowards too scared of their own stories

Stole mine and left me with nothing

I will not do the same

This time I return to my city of wreckage

And I carry with me as much of you as I can

A small hope, and the smell of your hair

Maybe it's enough to build something

Did you know little bird

That some hum along to your tune?

In springtime

When the world feels young again

They stop and sing awhile

Extolling your chorus

Wishing that their brilliance

Could sound a little more like yours

In winter

When sorrow catches in your throat

Weariness settling over your voice

A few have scrawled its notes to their memory

Matched tempo with your heart

They sing it for you

Until your ardor returns

When you can take up the melody again

You hear all the depth of beauty

In the harmonies in another's soul

Never forget that some can hear

My heart and body disagree

On the shape of the person I'll be

Everyone has opinions

My hands whisper, "Don't upset them."

My shoulders, "It's not worth it."

But my heart just wants to feel and dance

I make the choice I can

To live my life transforming

An internal world incarnate

Borrowed time from committee

'Til they decide I'm good or bad

But when I'm dead I'll still be bones

If I go before I sing

Life is an endeavor devoid of destination

A trek through an unmapped wilderness

Until calamity at last overwhelms vigor

Wrenching ambition from fearful fingers

Impermanence made irreversibly inert

Along the road to nonexistence

Myths germinate in borrowed bodies

Shared around campfires and repeated by mirror people

Purposes and pathways, the most consequential daydreams

Entropy trimmed to fit in the palm of your hand

Breathing amongst their tellers for a time

They dictate action and thought along their threadbare paths

Establishing remote margins of frail safety

From the placid creeping horrors of existing

Until their dissonance rings the hollow tone of the earth

Every voice yearns for a song in the face of nihility

Every story knits purpose from the dispassionate fabric of the void

Let us together then fill the vacuum with songs ringing of humility and empathy,

Drown out the stories of venom that drive pained and flimsy hearts to hate,

My eyes swim

Abounding pains that I never lived

I loved you once

You are drowning

Beneath waves of your sorrow

You don't wish to swim

Extending this foolish flesh

My hearts endeavor to help

Being reduced to whatsoever may aid

An appendage of you

I emerge one day

5 years later

Dripping of a self that I could keep afloat

With commensurate fervour

You scream at me then

Lungs supplying anger

To your blood and to your throat

I shut my eyes

To shutter myself from your fury

Afterimages of your hurt flood my vision

Empathy and fear, hand in hand

Lead me back into form, aching

I scrounge up all the scraps of bravery I find

Why can't I hate you

Rage for all the broken things

Your fear destroyed?

I thought we were synchronized swimmers

Enduring life's waves in tandem

I was only ever your buoy