Someday if you are lucky, you'll return from a thunderous journey, trailing snake scales, wing fragments, and the musk of the earth and moon.
Eyes will examine you for signs of damage or change and you too will wonder if your skin shows traces, of fur or leaves, if thrushes have built a nest in your hair.
If Andromeda burns from your eyes.
Don't be surprised by prickly questions from those who barely inhabit their own fleeting lives, who barely taste their own potential, who barely dream.
If your hands are empty, treasureless, if your toes have not grown claws, if your obedient voice has not become a wildcry, a howl, you will reasure them.
We warned you, they might declare, there is nothing else, no point, no meaning, no mystery at all. Just this frantic waiting to die.
And yet they will tremble, mute, afraid you've returned without sweet elixir for unspeakable thirst, without a fluent dance or holy language.
No teach them without compass bearing to a forgotten boarder where no-one crosses without weeping for the terrible beauty of galaxies and granite and stone.
They tremble, hoping your lips hold a secret, that the song your body now sings will redeem them, yet they fear.
Your secret is dangerous, shattering and once it flies from your astonished mouth, they-like-you-must-dis-intergrate
Before unfolding tremendous wings.