The Wanderer

Call me an old Rubik’s cube—

complex even for the most nimble-minded.

So frustrating that my stickers

have been torn off and replaced

in makeshift 3 by 3’s

and held down for a short while

by fingers too impatient
to 
find the center and work around it.


I never learned my own algorithm,

but somehow you seemed to know

just how many turns to make

all three sides line up.

Like a constellation never meant 
to be formed,
you found me


and named me “The Wanderer”

after my mind that tries

to convince herself she’s not lost.

I ask too many questions

but never hear the answers

I’m always too busy 

wandering the tides of your

lips forming the words that

would quell my curiosity if only

I had the will to be still


and listen for once.
The gears in
my brain churn 
slow,
stuck on the oils of you.

I close my eyes every
 now and then
to picture
us enraptured in our 
simple togetherness,

the only thing that will 
ever make sense. 

I don’t understand much, 
but I understand when

you stamp on the ashes 
of my mistakes that

I’ve tried to burn over and over

until the soot is ingrained in

your feet so that the footprints

you leave on my heart hold 
pieces

of my shattered past.
 I’ve made molds
of your print 
and lined them up one by one.
I’ve made so many that
 the plaster’s gone dry,
but
without my stepping stones

I don’t know where to go.

My fear clings to you like a 
toddler on her
father’s pant leg 
but you just tell
me “Hush,
 baby, I’ve got you.” as you 
lead
the way into the vast
 openness. Without a word,


you give me an answer,

for you know I wouldn’t listen anyway.

You took my hand as you

took my heart—with a laugh and
 a swipe that I didn’t 
see coming—
and together,
we solved the world.