Map Home the stories we tell hang between the stars coated in quiet and dirt fallen to splinters like there is no other way to see without eyes only the Soul understands the silky feeling that leaves our names exploding outwards when we feel impossibly soft in our hearts there are many things we hear of in stories (clever crows, lost children, enchanted woods) but we never hear of Soul: are we afraid to write near it? so we fill and then become hollow grief leaning into our chests like old men crowding fire the birds murmur this nightly tend the Soul, the magic in this world of burning blue stroking the sky with their song their feathers made of worn stone embers crack as everything is rearranged shadows thrashing in places skinned, tamed and sewn-up we can’t all talk back to the dark all the ways it is unbuckling change happens in fragments cracking, shattering and rumbling the way planets drag their bodies across the sky inside you these pages are like bones not like flowers the wild is losing her pelt her dreams a restless prayer come out of the shadows be the shape of a thousand bonfires burning on the horizon the story does not begin with a light or end with things in-between it ends with you re-drawing the lines of your life, the maps of a life you could carry the possibility of Home
Rachel McDonald 16