I trap the sun in a thousand dots under my skin,
crafting them into maps wrapped around tired shoulders,
so I can guide myself by the braille of my body
when darkness shivers over me and night grows colder.

Wind scatters the mapped seeds of my dandelion dreams,
casting my traces across oceans and continents.
My second hand shoes plod through places I will never see,
leaving footprints to sprout second hand monuments.
My roots grow like thick, tangled vines through all my places,
re-drawing my map with a thousand small traces.

The night sky I thought to be unnavigable
is washed bright with the light of innumerable stars
which cast sharp reliefs against my uncertain shadow
and write me into small footnotes in the sky’s memoirs.

I find nourishment in streams whose quiet waters have 
washed clean the tarnished faces of kings and tyrants,
cleaned sacred altars of unholy sacrifices
and witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations.
The water flows its history through my tired veins,
and when the water is gone from me, pieces remain.

I am older than history, younger than time,
formed full from the beginning of the universe
and doomed to remain thus until my final days
when I drink from the river, will you question my ways?

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

First published online on Pen to Paper.