grounded flight

"I had to unlearn their prison speak,
refuse to make wishes on the star
on the sheriff's chest.

I started wishing on the stars instead.
I said to the sun, 'Tell me about the big bang.'
The sun said, 'It hurts to become.'

I carry that hurt on the tip of my tongue
and whisper 'bless your heart' every chance I get
so my family tree can be sure I have not left.

You do not have to leave to arrive.
I am learning this slowly.
So sometimes when I looking the mirror
my eyes look like the holes in the shoes
of the shoe shine man.

Sometimes my hands are busy on the wrong things.
Some days I call my arms 'wings'
while my head is in the clouds.

It will take me a few more years to learn flying
is not pushing away from the ground."

-Andrea Gibson,
excerpt from her poem I Sing the Body Electric, Especially When My Power's Out.