​In the irises, for all to see
The strata of emotional geology
The scars of fault lines since infancy.
A web of fractures, the soul's fingerprint
Tracing transgressions and fear and love and loss
My catalogue of vulnerabilities.

Resilient I am, or so I am told
As scars whisper stories that never grow old.
I've run, I've hidden, I've covered, I've cried
But better they are, shown to the outside
That some fellow wanderer may also find
In my soul's fingerprint, some quiet guide.

Going East, 'til this Land gives way to infinity.
I'm gonna throw a rock off this continent
And watch ripples defy a roiling sea.

I'll close my eyes and not hear a sound
Save the salty wind sing an ancient song
About Zeus and Neptune and eternity...

And in that moment, my mind finally stops
Navigating conversations and pixels and fucking alarm clocks.

And when it's time, I'll come back around
Smiling wryly at the memory of the wind's ancient sound
That I heard once while going far Eastbound.

​I was walking around Times Square in July.  It was everything Times Square is + the withering heat of an unseasonably hot summer night.  Nonetheless, I was captivated.  In my mind, I was trying to reconcile why  I enjoy this place while also pining for Lapland in January. The answer came in the form of a poem (!), which I scribbled on the receipt at left.  I refined it a little more and then posted to an IG shot of Times Square.  The current version is below.