Compass

[tinywarrior]

For my friend S., the man who sometimes cannot see his own magnificent wings.

Compass

I have watched your journey from a distance,
marveled at the movement of you, sweet traveler,
blessed and cursed with the burden of the
changing landscapes of your own body.

I have held my breath as you wrestle
with deep waters and dangerous currents,
always with such an acute sense of the cost,
marked with sacred heart, bone, and gristle
of how you are finding your way to shore.

I have hoped for you to see yourself
as twilight-the most beautiful and brave
time of the day, where the world would quietly
give way to you without question or judgment.

I have silently applauded your steady navigation
through streams of self-doubt and longing, never
being so vain as to see yourself-a bona fide prodigy,
to have become the man you are without ever having
had the chance to be the boy you should have been.