You are not the ocean
Even if you feel as though
You are rising like the tide
Being turned away from
The shoreline and always
Coming back again and again

You are not the wind
But
You can still make goosebumps
Appear on skin
Or be the breath of
Fresh air someone needs

You are not a force of nature
You are so much stronger than that
So much bigger even if you
Still wish you were a hurricane
Something bigger than
You see yourself.

Someday we’ll be young again
Not quite innocent
But naïve enough to be happy
With enough time to sit still
And think about
How small we are
Compared to the stars
And how we too could
Light up the sky
If only we weren’t
Afraid To burn

I don’t know if I believe that
We are all made of stardust or
Swirling galaxies of energy
I know that my skin isn’t
As thick as I’d like it to be
And the freckles on my body
Don’t make constellations
Unless you know how to
Connect the dots

I know that mountains and snow
Will always feel like home
No matter where I am
And I know that home
isn’t always in the same
Place twice

Sometimes you feel home
In waves, that make your heart
Feel lighter and heavier
At the same time
Sometimes it’s a moment in time
That you could spend your life
Trying to define

Home is a dream, a photograph,
a stretch of highway,
An acre of forest that you’ve
Never thought to explore
It’s somewhere you know well
And sometimes somewhere
You’ve never been before.

The earth you stand on is older than you can fathom.
It is millions of years of ash, bone, and rebirth
Layer upon layer of ages gone by
Time you will never experience first hand

You hold uncountable births and deaths
In your cupped palms as you fill them with earth
You cannot know how many lives were lived
In that palmful of dark sand

Your toes time travel as they sink into the sand
You bring back eons under your fingernails
As you dig further back
Trying to feel what the world was like
when the world was still new
And time had yet to exist.

There is a nest of birds inside my body
Trying to peck and claw their way out.
I can feel their wings beating
Bruises onto my insides

Their ever flapping wings
Stir my stomach into knots
That I can’t hope to untie.

Every time I try to speak
My mouth fills with feathers
And I have to swallow hard
Again and again
To keep from choking on them.

They’ve pecked holes in my mind
These restless creatures inside me
So that I can’t understand anything
The way I used to.

I know they are trying to escape
That they are trapped inside me
They mean me no harm, really,
still, most days I feel
More like the caged bird
than the cage itself.

The Machine parts in me have rusted
I am all creaking metal fatigue
And slowly splintering glass
I am not indestructible
I am not build to withstand
The storms I have weathered
But I have survived them
Maybe a little less intact
Than I was before
And each one wears down
Each part of me a little more
There are no spare parts here
And when one wears out
You have to learn
To live without it
Until you are nothing but
Jangling bits inside a
Worn down shell
A barely functioning
Version of what you
Once were
But then again you have
More storms to weather
Than you could know
After all,
They don’t make them
Like you anymore.

This February sky is mad and beautiful
and I want to hold its stars in my mouth.
I want to cough them up into new constellations,
spit out the blackness
That gets caught in the back of my throat.
Feel the cold of the moon under my tongue
While the galaxies swirl in my stomach
twisting my insides into new knots
While I know that inside me
There is the potential to create
New worlds, new stars
I breathe in the light studded darkness
Close my eyes and see the night sky
That has made it’s home within me.
I may not be a constellation,
But I could be.