Above the confusing anguish, the contours visited daily by groping shadows, immovable silence settles around me. I know of the dreadful vastness I don’t yet understand, and my pitiful reach breaches no new ground.

But not so far above that I can forget the mountains, or that I am beyond the love of a winter fireplace. How it enthrals to stand and watch the stars, how it terrifies to watch the photocopied city folk.

How the sea shakes awake melodies in my soul that I cannot sing aloud, aware that I am bereft of the capacity to do so. I drift with shadows in silent wind, a silhouette between the blue and green, mute; contained.

Unable to mimic acceptance of the seated ones, fat and crooked; unable to see the difference between they themselves, and those who forget the questions on their tongues. Is it fear or obesity of the mind, that feeds those desaturated hearts?

I will not sit and grin dumbly with them.

I will drift instead in silence and grow my arms and reach. I will seek outlet for those songs that swim beyond a wintry shore, that like a haze now swim inside me and whisper that there’s more.

There is a hunger on my skin and a warrior in my bones, but peace lies in the vastness, too far beyond my windswept home.