On Realising Home is More than One Place
Talking to my parents, I bite back habit
and call it ‘college’. I can’t explain how definitions
expand, how even my own name
keeps redefining itself, how my heart
is a dog-eared dictionary, constantly being revised.
Home (noun) will always mean
my steel-blooded seven-hilled city,
the house I’ve known longer than myself.
But that’s only the first entry.
In the glow of late-night laughter,
I wonder why no one told me
my ribcage could hold two cities.
Observatory Hill
We learn how to make a lighter burn
more brightly than it should.
A glowing frisbee arcs the moon;
I brush it with numb fingers and cannot grasp.
The cathedral below us
like a cliché; we ignore the scaffolding.
I smile and the November air
tastes like iron between my teeth.
We shout each other’s names
into the dark. There are more miracles
in the voices around me
than in the sky above.
The Kindling 