WHERE THE HEART IS

 poem i wrote about my boyfriend before he was my boyfriend. yes

WHERE THE HEART IS

watching flurries of dust
bounce off of passengers’ clothes
and luggage and
maybe off of the lip of the overhead,
watching it dance and then stumble
quietly, discreetly in the air without
any sort of acknowledgment or wave away
watching it sunbathe 
in the pure light from 
way above the clouds 
makes me think of how
our homes follow us 
wherever we go:

my bed is settled 
within my person, it 
came with me to the airport and 
i left a trail of it 
in my wake,
parts and pieces of forest animals and
little pink stars may have 
snuck their way into
someone else’s suitcase,
scattered beads from the holes in my 
hand-me-down weighted blanket
probably got wedged
in the sole of someone else’s shoe,

and the breath of you
which intertwines itself in the threads 
of the sweater that i
sleep in every night may have
stuck to me, and shed from 
the skin on my neck
like wafts of perfume,
finding its way
into the throat of another.

and sitting at the gate

i can still hear 

your lungs inflating 
then deflating again
like something meant to keep tempo,
and the sound of your muscles 
sinking into my own
is a song that bleeds from my ears
and leaks from my headphones
only to disrupt everyone around me,
only to earn me 
a tap on the shoulder
and a request to 
turn down my music.