Three thousand years ago

Odysseus comes home to a

mirage—or so the story

goes. Three thousand years

ago when I come home

it's to the same shroud of

godly illusion that tricks me

into turning away. The lie

that deceives the deceiver.

Can I call it justice?

Two thousand years ago,

the man makes the same

journey with a different

name from a different empire.

Each new generation his

story is retold, his fate is

changed. Ulysses leaves

home, again, in another

retelling. The meaning

morphs, and therefore so

do I. Maybe I am cursed

like Cain. Marked. One

with the earth I sow.

Home is just a people

when there is no place.

Home is a place in any

other circumstance. (Home is

a place. I can't reconcile

where.) I don't know

where I am but I think

I know why I'm here—this

is a wandering of epic.

"Calliope," I beg into

nothing. "Let me recite this.

Let me tell it again."

The heavens are heavy

with the weight of my wishes

of a different time and a

different place. If God saw

me, he would call me

ungrateful. If I saw myself

from a different body I would

call myself homesick, but I

know better. I'm such a sorry

sight, I think, looking at my own

image from outside my

fading form. Wanting time

to stop for nothing. I'm just

as predictable as the rest;

I would miss everything I

ever cursed, every moment

I tried to forget but never

could. I've blamed my doom

on a different pantheon

with each new phase of

the moon. If I were them

I would look down and laugh,

too, at a mortal mourning the

sublunary. If only I never died.

If only it were just my aches

and wanting that returned

to dust. I can already hear

Adam laughing from the dirt.

But I wander through mouths

like myth. My throat is

blackened with the smoke

of relics, of Notre Dame.

Of being spoken into existence.

It hurts to tell the story.

"For fate has wove the thread of life with pain,

And twins ev'n from the birth are misery and man!"

- Homer's Odyssey (trans. Alexander Pope)

January knocked me breathless. It

rushed in thick with melancholy and

heavy with fatigue, with cold and corrosion.

It gifted sharp-chilled winds on the

water's surface, reaching for the shore

out of desperation, branches plucked clean

and grass turned brittle—my gaze pulled

low like the clouds to the dew; the fog

made heavy like disillusionment. I cannot

romanticize the ocean, anymore, now

that the sun refuses to tint it gold, now

that it freezes me to the bone. The

dulled grays of dawn paint me softer

than beaches now colored bone-white and

beaches now burying the last remains of a hundred humid reveries. Behind my eyelids

sits the blood-red tinge of an August ghost.

I barely remember what it was like to burn,

how it felt to live blistered, the scrape of

sand across my skin so bruised and

branded by brutal, solstice sunbeams.

This hole in my chest can only be filled

by the coming of June, by gilded peace.

This wound only heals by being cauterized,

and only Apollo’s light may touch me.

O muse, sing of how I am nothing more

Than this, so mute, so selfish even now

As I look deep into these godlike words;

I am made small. This is a prophecy.

O muse, sing loudly of my weakness

And my pride! I wish for gifts I cannot

Claim, hold my ambition high with my own

Flawed voice—my death erased by glory sought.

O muse, sing of the things I think I know:

The machinations of the human mind,

The greatness that eclipses dying suns—

How I bid haste to these old dreams of mine.

Sing hymns of how inferior I am,

Of need to prove that I existed—breathed.

In reality it is mid-July.

The cicadas hum

loud in my ears, angry

underneath my feet.

Sand scrapes across

my skin still red-tinged

and branded by this

east coast sun, this

small-town haze and

reverie. Unfiltered

sunbeams make me

passive and it is easy

to forget the way my

bones ache for Appalachia.

Poseidon's hands tug

on my sea-castle with

the strength of a thousand

horses I'll never ride,

and in this hallucination

I see myself drown.

In my head I still smell

the salt and feel the sting.

The way a boy on a

different ocean says

my name so honey-winged.

The way a tempest

churns and pleads to sing.

I have no more memories

of concrete jungles and

Deep South heat—I am

built from the sand

I will return to. I leave

my body behind to

sink in the Atlantic and

wonder when this beast

will in turn leave me.

this suffocation has

followed me from the

shoreline. these instincts

are primal, are endless

urges to claw new faces

into the mountainsides

just to feel the earth

underneath my fingernails.

the peaks rise up like

wisdom i'll never grasp,

ancient in all their

indifference. the mist

doesn't choke them like

it does me, and it proves

that no matter where i

flee, all that i left behind

has already infected this

side of my skin. a bounty

on my head; a death

wish if i slow down. this

late-june loneliness, this

summer-solstice emptiness

hollows out my ribcage

and nests where i am

too afraid to reach

inside and dig. unfiltered

sunbeams make me passive—

and that's just another

failed metaphor for the ache

to redeem myself to

him. i see mother earth

painted soft in the distance;

i see the color leave

my skin in the mirror

and eventually, the miles

tinge me blue like the rest

of appalachia. there's no

crown for the first to the top.

there's no gilded throne

for the conquerer. the

peaks hold their territory

tight with their millennia

and i am too young,

too young, too ephemeral.

too buried in the back of a

long-collapsed mine shaft.

(the emeralds wink at

me from my grave—they

tell me my bones will

fuse with these outstretched

hands of rock and

that if i will be remembered

for anything, it will be for

how they will unearth me

in a hundred, a thousand

years and find my skeleton

still crying out apologies

to my mother.)

set the scene: the end

of the line. the path that

winds to a close, twists into

itself like it chokes on its

own secrets. two roads

diverged under wilting pines

that lead off the same cliff.

the bones beneath spread

out like spilled water and

children skip stones across

the ribs anyway, like they

can't tell the difference

between a shove and an

embrace. my fingers ache

to touch the crest of a

mountain and the itch

persists, it moves through

me, my words leaving a dry

mouth already cauterized

by dead, dying coals.

admitting it tastes like

freedom and it is the

lightest thing i have held

since urgency. these

eyes are deep. the wolves

shrink from the unfamiliar

depths. hymns are sung,

notes heavy with dust,

gravitational, trailing my

footsteps as i keep walking

for the last time. in another

life, two steps mark the

beginning of one more dream.

in this life, the remnants

are mine to bury beneath

my city's concrete bed

and i, i am the core of

the earth. nobody owns me.

bodies fill the air

like the hands of

the strangled. they

lower themselves down

slow, eternal, crushing

the bones of the old

gods. a chalice bleeds

over the rim because

they cannot and rivers

run red with wine and

not salvation. in a world

where martyrs are

worshipped more than

heroes they gather like

disease. they are just

following orders. with

them comes flame that

swallows the words of

god's men, devours the

body whole. feathers are

light on your own skin. a

glowing wing. a man

kneeling, unclean like the

scorched earth. chests

ache with cravings to

sink under their swords

as the sky collapses to

the dirt, brought on by

their downswing. they bring

heaven to earth for the

saints who are already

dead. i watch my ancestors

exhale golden light and my

name does not pass their lips.

light caresses tear at my skin,

and i am taught holiness.

there are no halos. there

is no peace. (in death

there is a difference.)

"you are hungry for revelation,"

they whisper. i am starving. i

am.

It's molded like we

are. It's the low voices

of late mutterings

and prayers underneath

your sheets and it

chokes like my red

shame. I am spineless,

guilty, and fading

with the murals.

Poseidon's hands tug

on my sea castle and

rip my skin from bone

with the strength of

a thousand horses

I'll never ride. I sink

back into my vices

and wonder why

I can never let go.

Soulless lips press

kisses to the ocean floor,

whisper promises

I can never keep, that

I will exist for eternity.

Wasting away is easy.

I wish the end would

come quicker.

In my head it is mid-July.

I am sinking into the heavy air,

suffocating under the weight

of it. I inhale each new starlight-

confession with every breath

and do not believe a single one,

used to the words pushed out

from the tongue by fleeting

feelings floating upwards

with bonfire smoke, gone.

Summer's blood runs mauve on

bruised horizons and shadows lie

thick in their own lethargy.

Forests of gnarled limbs pull me

threadbare, grab at the sky and

unravel the blue by the string. White

lies are spoken swift like streams

until they dry and leave our spirits

flickering like hallucinations. Empty

husks anchor their toes in the sand.

Salt stings my blistered lips. I choke

on promises from a heavy mouth

and sink into the transience of youth,

taste the beating red of mercury.

i. i am told there is so much more to loveliness than lips and eyebrows, that the traits lurking under are plenty. i am told i am everything and that i am like no one else. there is more than the shape of my nose, more to be unearthed when the right person cares enough to dig. bright with dancing sunbeams, i am told i am the sun. i am told i am warm. i am told i am so much more than they told me i am. they promise me things and i believe them. my curls frame a perfect picture, they say. i am quick-thinking. i care, i am not told that i care too much. i manage to catch eyes that do not stray for a while. is it enough?

ii. i am not beautiful but i could be.

iii. the bitterness cannot be explained. there is a deep loathing within that i cannot will away, something flowing through my arteries, that touches every part of me. i am lied to. i am never looked at twice. truth is unearthed slow, fossilized within my empty smiles. i am more easily replaced than sources of happiness and i am only kept close for convenience. i am picked first but chosen last. the only pictures of myself i love are the ones where my face is hidden. hide the eyes to hide the soul, hide the mouth to hide the false affirmations of confidence and assurance. i cannot peel back my skin to reveal what is under, or i will be left alone again. nothing is ever as right as it could be. words are brittle. i am tired of telling people things. i am tired of being understood. i do not believe them anymore.

iv. i am not beautiful and i never could be.