The First Direction
Before the language for north, I learned her name. She moved through rooms like she ruled what I was still scared of. My legs learned to stand watching her move. My body learned to dance to her rhythm. Her voice was the frequency my own calibrated against.
Two shadows, one sun
the warm floorboard keeps its print
Small feet learn to land
Two shadows cast by the same cloud, united by what shaped us, we brightened together on clear days and dimmed together in gloom. It felt as though we were closer to each other than to the sun itself.
Sharing one twilight
two fireflies cross the meadow
Spring and fall alike
Every sapling grows past the shade of the tree that sheltered it. Every fledgling leaves the nest. Fireflies are no different. There comes a season when each light forges its own path twinkling across a dusky field.
Summer field at dusk
two fireflies drifting apart
night stretches between
Independence did not always equate to distance. We still crossed the same fields from time to time, carrying stories gathered along our separate trajectories. Yet, growing older means learning what dimmed your glow, and sometimes, tracing them back to the hands that never meant to clasp so tight on you.
Caught light in a jar,
following its fading glow
She found me unchanged
What she found, she gave a name. Perhaps I did the same. Once spoken aloud, those names settled deep with heaviness neither of us intended.
The compass points right
to their iron coated tongue
Sun does not rise north
Time has a way of turning people into directions, the same way firefly symbol surpasses its physical form. We spend years learning how to follow and how to comply. Then, rest of our lives, we learn how to preserve our glow.
Some nights I think of the field where two fireflies crossed the same patch of sky and I knew nothing of north.
Searching old fields still
for the second firefly’s glow
North keeps changing names