I WEAR THE WIND ON MY HAIR

The wolf needn’t blow down the house my father built

On the slopes of hills and mountains green

Glowing

Almost neon in the summertime

---

The doors were unlocked

Windows ajar

It was safe then

To count the stars

To sing out loud

To believe in holy Sunday mornings

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The wind alone huffed

And it puffed with no effect

Beyond my hair forever windswept

On Fridays after school

Stone skipping by the sea

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My clumsy angling dropped

The stones unholily in shallow waters

Too far from the skyline

Drawn athwart my thirst to go beyond

The doors unlocked

The opened windows

---

I swallowed the wind to be the wolf

Huffing and puffing past the swaying curtains

Filling sails to heel me into shores unknown

---

But I was young, of course

(And young means

You don’t know

You’re not invincible)

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I’d never gotten high then

Drunk or in love

I left before I even took up smoking

---

I was young then

Of course I didn’t know that going back would hurt as much as coming down and up the front door’s steps again (though they looked smaller

For I’d grown taller, and)

My teeth had yellowed too

I had to look away to smile

At the hills over my mother’s shoulder

Towering over trains of thought that traveled back

From where I'd been

To remind me I had moved towards moving on

---

But no one moves on, I said.

Never.

From anything.

---

We move with

Else we move through

---

I’ll always feel the weight

in

my hands

in

my lined paper pockets

full of secret sunken stones

---

My once upon forever home

Blooms in neon summer-green still

There

The house my father built stands still

Where I never did

---

But I’m not young now

I know

I may never find home in it again .

Nor will I ever be safe

Out here.

In the wind.