i don’t know what this is-
contentment
creeping in around the corners of the bleak and
melodramatic
knowledge that i’ve carried most my life
this will be over soon, tomorrow
isn’t anything that’s real
and on waking, late, before the sun has even thought of
coming by to check in with its
ugly cheerful disposition
flower-growing hippie
bright philosophy
my eyes adjust and arms held out
i wait
but not for long and it settles over me
like a blanket knit from long-forgotten
memories of safety and security

owls can see in the dark
three hundred sixty degrees.

there is only one pulse here,
and we are spiderwebbed together
tucked inside the place that i mapped out
cartographic, unintentional
indelible, i know
where i belong.