HERO’S JOURNEY
I can probably pull it off: I’m interested in miracles
when I’ve made them, I can emerge from mist
full of information. I’ve prepared for the first scene my whole life,
stumbling half-drunk out of your mom’s Corolla. I know the chorus
to the song and when they play it. I know when to say seen one,
seen them all like I believe it. I can do this
like I haven’t just burned pictures of ex-boyfriends
in the backyard, watching their trophy fish recede,
their eyes still waiting for a reaction. Like I haven’t spent the day
contemplating things commonly abandoned—ships, towns,
baby deer—and mourned the wrong one every time.
I don’t know if heaven is a passing detail
of the world you keep seeing something else in,
but I’ve had my suspicions. Totally numb this town is
to its own interior, to the potential of imitation
woodpaneling in recalling the cedar tree and all that animates
around it. I try to tell you, now that I've navigated the woods
with the light of a dead fish, now that I could sketch a birdbath
if asked. I tell you, as you look far past me to the bar, laughing,
predicting the story would end sad. You say you’d never feel bad
for a tiny god in the water: he had his day, like we’ll get ours.
The past never was an abbreviated town in a snowglobe, I’m certain
like I’m certain the first image is a glimpse of the last,
the longing for vertical lines after being in the desert
not unlike now, walking home thinking of the story
as you’d like it told, always from the beginning.