Apollo's North Star

(Verse 1)

Kate finds him waiting near the dunes,

Apollo, with a garden winding across his muzzle.

Petals of indigo and ochre traced around his golden eyes,

A constellation pulled from the places she’s been avoiding.

She leans in, hands buried in the thick scruff of his neck,

Letting his heavy, canine breath dissolve the noise she carries

Until the needle in her chest stops its frantic spinning,

Finding its North Star in the heat of his fur.

(Verse 2)

The big dog moves for the water and she catches his wake,

Boots dragging through the heavy, salt-soaked grit.

While the stems on his coat seem to shift and oscillate,

A blooming Polaris seeking a light she nearly missed.

He stops and looks back, ears flicking to catch her pace,

A four-legged guide cutting through the stories she’s been repeating.

He doesn't need her to translate the silence;

He’s already reading the latitude she hasn’t dared to speak.

(Chorus)

She tells him she’s tired of hollow explanations,

Of carrying the weight of ghosts that aren't her own.

The wind calls her name—a low, certain vibration—

And Apollo stands rooted, tail stilled, like he’s always known

That he is her North Star painted on the world,

The only fixed point she has left to follow.

(Verse 3)

He guides her up the headland with a four-pawed gravity,

Each step a coordinate, keeping the long ascent honest.

She follows because she trusts his instinct

More than her own fractured memory of the path.

At the summit, he turns to meet the sun head-on,

Letting the light catch the architecture of the paint,

Until the North Star she’d been running from all along

Finally settles into the dirt at her feet.

(Bridge)

It wasn’t decoration; it was a reclamation,

A celestial guide etched in velvet and bone.

She puts a hand on his warm coat and feels the vibration

Of two kindred souls finally answering to the same name.

She wasn’t lost, just walking a borrowed rhythm,

Until Apollo’s steady gait led her back to her own center.

(Chorus)

She tells him she’s tired of the hollow explanations,

Of carrying the weight of ghosts that aren't her own.

The wind calls her name—a low, certain vibration—

And Apollo stands rooted, tail stilled, like he’s always known

That he is her North Star painted on the world,

The only fixed point she has left to follow.

(Outro)

The sun goes down on the indigo lines,

The girl and her North Star in the shifting pines.

No more explaining.

Just the dog.

Just the light.