Atlas in his Youth
You are walking along a beach by the ocean, singing a song voiced perfectly in your head & in your heart but your sunburnt lips aren’t moving. The light sparkles like gunpowder on November waves, & you cannot touch them at all. You try. Try again. You tried.
See these people? Holding hands, opening bags, flying kites, kissing eyes. They are not your friends. They are your parents, & your grandparents, & parents so far removed you’d share a cigarette on the cold fat rock by the pier. They have a place, not here.
Someone will see you, all lit up, eternal & faceless, but not w/out your graces. & you will stand in place until the sand buries your feet together, roots for branches. When you are thirsty, you will open your mouth to the sky like the very first time, every time.
But for now you are walking. The boats are drowning. & somewhere a baby is born.
