an ocean cartographer and an astronomer

fell in love

and mapped out the freckles on your back,

the lines of your smile,

the patterns in your irises. 

they fashioned you a throne 

from the ashes of this broken world.

they gave you a paper crown and 

a pat on the head and asked you

to sit quietly and stare at the hurt that 

surrounded you and try,

for god's sake,

to be happy.

eventually the ocean waves 

dragged your mother 

to foreign shores like driftwood

and your father started seeing

celestial images 

in his morning coffee and his afternoon drinks;

in shop windows and dirty puddles

on city sidewalks.

cosmogony was everywhere and it 

made him feel bored and analytical and gray.

but still you sat there, 

made of extragalactic matter 

and ocean currents, 

too afraid to move for the fear that

you would fall apart into 

the hands of the people around you

who couldn't recognize 

the prolific 

and tragically consolidated waywardness

of your mind

or the fact that your body

is a time capsule

without a key or an "open when" date.

in many ways you refuse to believe

that you ever left

your throne of condemnation.

but, in reality, 

each day you take shaky steps

towards a place where the ocean kisses the night sky

and every sunset says 

"I'm sorry for the things I've done to you."

every step is a "screw you"

to the ocean cartographer and the astronomer

who thought they could combine the 

respective endlessness of the sea

and the stars

and call it anything less than art.