If I Ever Go Missing
If I ever go missing before we ever meet,
Instead of telling you where I’m hiding,
I will leave here what was left of me.
I’m sorry, but you will not get
a single breadcrumb from me.
Maybe through torn maps, the blinding North star,
and forest canopies,
maybe through collecting my abandoned jewelry,
you might be able to reach me.
But I must warn you,
I am a rock fallen out of orbit,
born from dust polished by the seas of Neptune.
I am a speck rolling in fire, washed into the night,
a particle no one has beheld in existence;
you need more than any number of eyes
just to watch the sparks radiating from my bones
and hidden memory.
Before you go looking for me,
don’t you ever glue pictures of my face
on the walls of buzzing streets
or any rugged bellies of these old, sorry trees;
whoever sees them would never recognize me.
Because I must warn you,
my skin folds into comets and tails of lightning,
at one touch their power will be as useless
as the letter C in my first name,
never owning a sound besides
echoing letters S or K.
You might believe I was destined to stay here,
but if taken into the glare of Mercury
and a dip of sun spray,
people here will already forget
the pitch of my being --
failing to string together
the very cords in my throat.
My friend, you should think twice
before calling me into alleyways
and chambers damp from mildew;
I will be gone the second I hear you.
But dear oh dear,
you poor, clouded satellite
trapped in rotation around my sphere of
empty, empty, empty.
If you insist,
if you want to finish getting to know me
and my ever-dying abilities,
there is a good chance that you can find me
where the heart beats faster and the mind runs clearly.
If you turn around,
you might catch a glimpse of moonlight:
Hold it close and you may hear
the whispers of my aches and dreams.
Speak softly now,
you might scare the strength out of me.
You'll never know where my thoughts will go next,
just let me be the one driving this journey.
If you wriggle me out of the earth,
where my teeth have been fossilized to
weigh me down on this short living of sky,
don’t be quick to accept the feel of my company.
Someday I'll return to the stars and sleep in the void,
a place where I hope to find colors I've never seen before.
And when I master the art of painting into the galaxies
of pain and recovery,
I will discover the truth in me.
I will be free, I will be free.
Let the constellations tattoo the spaces of my body.
You say you have found me,
I say I love to be missing
with tiny bits flaking behind me,
a shooting star playing chase with someone so naive
as to singe their astronaut screens --
All of this rocketing
just to harvest specks rolling in fire,
washed into the night,
particles that no man has seen in the naked eye,
and I,
I will bestow this sight
as an eternal gift to you.
Let us stretch as far as cosmic lightning
and nestle on the horizon of mother universe;
her waves of thunder,
churning the starlight within our being,
within whoever we are,
and we,
we will vanish the moment
we hear a single call
into the dark.
This poem is about:
Me
