Carry You

We are a strong family, a closely knit constellation
strung together by our bloodlines.
We wanted you to be the banner of our floating ship,
a spectacle among the cosmos.
And believe me your parents,
they shot for the stars when they dreamed of making you.
But they missed the carriage, and I’m forever sorry.

You were an embryonic ball of stardust
channelling lightyears into bone marrow
that ran a few smiles short to keep you lit
or maybe the haloes tracing ventricles didn't spin fast enough,
but even though your mother was the only world you knew,
never forget that you come from the stars.

I see you look lost among this interstellar mall.
I will take you by your bright little hand and we’ll have
the Milky Way’s Customer Service Desk announce your name via megaphone,
God’s vocal chords.
And we will stand there forever if we have to.
I will not leave you until the galaxy’s lights shut down
And the lowering cages leave us nowhere else to go
but back to our mother's womb.
But at least we lived in heaven once.
Mother has a piece of heaven living
inside of her, and it's about this big.

I know you lived there and remember
the songs she sang you.
And how she fed you spoonfuls of lullabies
bedtime prayers
and birthday wish photographs
that sink into your exposed heart like promises
all for the first time and everything tastes so sweet.

Mother adored your little body before your
limbs could develop enough to grasp this concept of love.
Who is to say you are not a member of this family?
Who is to say?

You were even given a name very early in your conception,
and when I call upon this name your shapeless shadow moves
like a squirrel through my peripheral.
I want so longingly to play with you,
you handful of marbles,
but I would never forgive myself if I were to lose any part of you.

I know that homesickness has kept you away
in its talons for this long,
and tragedy has miscarried you to the pits of oblivion.
But I will find you and piece you back together.
I will take up the red shards of new beginnings that you are
because it’s too early to simply call it remains.
If I had the power to bring you back like Lazarus
I would do so before you could say “Big Brother.”
But all I can do is hold you up.
I will lift up your unfinished body
like rubies, and I will cradle you into the lake of my heart.

I will plant you through the soil of my flesh.
My veins will pour needlepoint memoirs through your pupils.
My lungs will whistle 3,000 proverbs through your nostrils,
and when your voice sprouts
your first birth cries
I will carry you home!

Enclothed in the ivy that hemorrhages from these bones
I will carry you.
The way horizons carry daybreak,
I will carry you with arms spread,
so when noon comes I will see you at your brightest
and pause time so I can keep you there.
I will carry you the same way our father carries his last name
in his sleep, in his wake, it is written by his veins in signature
all across his chest.
When I find you I will carry you on my shoulders
like you always wanted to be carried
and don’t be afraid to show yourself
so I can reach into your formlessness,
find your face,
lift up your chin,
and show you your name.
Julian,
when you finally come home,
you can share my birthmarks
if it helps you feel that much more alive.