He held my hand, freshly wrought from my mother's womb, torn through a hole in her belly and spilled from a hole in his heart. He smelled of Old Spice and body odor and marijuana, he wore gold chains when he was born to rags and stacks of wood. His grip on my hand, so firm and strong and settled, his gentle cooings and warmth; I miss the safety of it. You can't be held when you're the same size, when the holder is the one who might need to be held. What nightmares had you seen in white-washed walls and halls of ravings and throwings and the violence of a withdrawn mind? Father, it is you that I have become, that I still fixate toward-- my heart is heavy and my head is torn apart. You are my North Star that guides me through life's oceans, my scale to balance my heart to a feather; I wonder if it might be weighed down with regret? Father, it is you that I march toward, that I find myself morphing into, plucked from the cocoon of maturity from a hole torn in its belly. I had left one womb for another, it seemed. Did I ever truly tell you what you meant to me? Even when you weren't around I turned to the air to the warmth around me to a stranger's grip or the embrace of another. Even when you had left the world for the one in your head I only looked up to the twinkling of the night to find my guide; I remember reaching a shaky hand out to the skies. The starry curtain wrapped around my arm, flowing like a gentle ocean, like the fluid in the womb then solidifying like bedrock like bottoms like bases. Even when I hadn't seen you in months or spoken to you in years, I still held on to that firm grip, that far-too gentle hand.