ode to home [sickness]

i feel your ache
deep here
in my belly where i
splay my hands and feel you
digging into my body, you ache, you addiction,

you home i cannot leave behind.

even when i fly the coop, i
only soar redundant circles around
you
golden home and golden chains
and i am a bird with one wing clipped and
i do not know it.
i pull away and yet


and yet.



i feel you in my bones, i feel
your cuts, your burns, your scabby knees, the
way you touch people with your casual hands and
demand a colored and brilliant attention. and
when i was not looking, you left a
little mark,
on my fingertips so that everything i touched
would know
would know
where i came from. where i circle. where i spend my restless nights.


my golden city, i am circling so
i can know your peaks, your dips, the places
where your land grows dim and dark and where
the light glances off your rough cut shores.

sometimes, at night, when i stare at
cool dark unyielding buildings
i hear you singing, near the shore,
like a mirage a vision a hope
i hear you singing and i feel my feet
being tugged towards the door.



one day, i will pull on my coat and
kick the dust from my boots and i will sail home
to you,
a prodigal child called home to your broad arms.


but this is not that day
first i must cut your gilded chains.