In high school, before I dropped out,
I’d sit by the creek bed
smoke cigarettes and grass with my friends and
say; “something is missing, man;
something’s not right.” But
Everyone feels they’re an outcast
at sixteen, sweet
potential bursting unseen
in the long dull mirror
Stoned, I’d contemplate the lay of the land:
Dad awaiting the losses of autumn
three siblings, strangers breezing in
and out, one sister younger,
the charge in our mother’s storms.
How to navigate that landscape?
Grief wound through dense foliage
my family’s deception
a gemstone buried
many years in acidic soil.
I finally unearthed that small hard mass
and revealed that who I wasn’t—
how I didn’t
fit, was at its root.
Now I tend my autumn garden
and walk its winding paths:
one of stone; my life as given
one of earth that kept that silence
each is someone’s secret tracing
soulprints toward home.