Flying Sideways to Find You
Crazy enough to follow the pull of the soul
Birds fly sideways through the sky sometimes.
I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
What do they know in their hollow bones?
Wind cannot be seen, only felt.
I flew sideways once.
For a lifetime, it seemed,
to find you.
I sold my furniture.
Gave my houseplants to the sushi chef
at the restaurant where I worked.
Packed my guitar and a few suitcases
into my Hyundai Elantra and
drove away from a life of 16 years
without looking back.
Hollow, echoing bones.
How could I explain?
I had a vision in my sister’s backyard one morning
while fiercely journaling out my pain
next to the raspberry patch.
In my mystic sight,
you were faceless and nameless
but you reached for my hand and I took yours
and we rose together
from the rubble of our lives.
All of it.
The divorces.
The failures.
The heartbreak on repeat.
The generational cycles of harm.
Everything we were taught
love should be.
That backyard vision burned a hole in my life.
Sometimes you know a thing in your soul,
and you can’t unknow it no matter
how much trouble it makes.
I had to find you.
I called you The Mystery Man.
I knew you were out there.
I just didn’t know where you were
or who you were.
My family thought I was nuts.
I took it as a compliment.
I wandered the country
working odd jobs, visiting friends,
looking for you in the face of everyone I met.
I fell in love a few times, certain it was you,
until I knew it wasn’t.
“What you’re looking for doesn’t exist,”
one of them said to me as we parted ways.
Yes, I know, darling. Because I’m here to create it.
I’ve been wrong about so many things.
I haven’t always accurately interpreted my dreams.
I know surrender and defeat.
So tonight when I look out the window
from the sink where I’m washing dishes and
see you working on our leaky well pump
in the oak grove doused with golden hour light,
I thank the Universe for this unspeakable gift—
for guiding my wings through
a secret sky I was fool enough to fly.
Ah - I once thought:
We will be gone so quickly:
Because they will not understand.
They will think we disappeared
In a blinding cataclysm
Leaving sedimentary footprints and an iridium trace:
But we simply chose our best life.
To love our lizard brains
And sing the song of the universe to each other
Flying on the weightless wings of our infinite pinions
How absurd
And perhaps you made that true with such beauty.
I will remember it like that.
‘I flew sideways once.’ This line! What a tender poem. Thank you! ♥️