one of the gifts for your birthday was
nonexistent constellations etched in your skin
cascading down your shoulders evoking
subdued squirms
        my ever gallant one

I swore they'd guide you home
these nebulas of crooked flora dusted
with sugary swirls of the Milky Way
a biblical formula of unquestionable permanence
        but

it was I who followed the ink which
washed down your drain
through sewers out to sea
        it was permanence
        shelter
        which skin couldn't give
and in those lullabies the ocean sang I
saw the stars clearer
        a better map than all your body combined
        could ever give to cure cosmic wanderlust