Distance
Sometimes I dwell in the sky, loose like a kite without a string, sometimes I look in the mirror and wonder if my father has come back to life, maybe to sit me down as he often did, calm words, that furrow in his brow steady, sometimes I fall asleep on the bottom of the river, wake in the night to the constant stars, my head filled with constellations and the next day I feel like I have come back from Alpha Centauri, my life packed so densely into my skin that it might be impossible to die, sometimes I mark the nights with a notch I carve into a piece of river cedar, a surface mottled with the trails carved by wood borers, that language buried deep in bone marrow, and sometimes, because I have taught my tongue to fly, you might hear it close to you, words uttered into your sleep trying to describe the immense distances I travel every night.
Michael Delp