Lines for a lost Map

A coin fell through the cracks of planned design. .
And rolled into a hallway not my own. .

The night revised the script I’d underlined. .
And left me speaking lines I’d never known. .

A letter came that wasn’t meant for me. .
Its ink described a stranger with my face. .

It named my secret wounds in plain degree. .
And traced their origin to time and place. .

A train I meant to catch pulled out too soon. .
Its fading lights dissolved into the rain. .

I walked home underneath a swollen moon. .
And met an old regret that knew my name. .

A friend I trusted vanished in a day. .
Their silence rearranged my inner sight. .

The absence carved a door within the clay. .
Where softer hands could touch the buried light. .

A book on types lay open on my bed. .
Nine windows into storms I’d called just “me.” .

The patterns of my heartbeat could be read. .
As maps of fear and half-remembered plea. .

I saw how anger dressed itself as right. .
How envy wore the costume of a lack. .

How gluttony mistook its hunger’s height. .
For proof that nothing loved would ever come back. .

I watched my pride defend a crumbling throne. .
While sloth pretended numbness was relief. .

Each sin a language pain had made its own. .
Each mask a way to bargain with my grief. .

Yet in the web of all these crooked lines. .
A quiet thread kept glimmering between. .

It shimmered where the worst of my designs. .
Had failed and left a gap for grace unseen. .

The chance encounter on a winter street. .
The job I lost that broke my careful scheme. .

The diagnosis dropping like a sleet. .
That woke me from a long, anesthetic dream. .

These were not proofs of some exacting fate. .
Nor random blows from indifferent skies. .

They were the moments ego learns too late. .
That broken glass can open seeing eyes. .

For when the map I worshiped came undone. .
The living terrain asked for my bare feet. .

I found that every detour from the “one.” .
Revealed another soul for mine to meet. .

A stranger’s kindness at a traffic light. .
A nurse who joked while threading in the line. .

A teacher who stayed talking late at night. .
Until my shame grew small enough to shine. .

Not every hurt was followed by a cure. .
Not every loss returned in sweeter form. .

Some questions stayed like weather I endure. .
Some roads dissolved in yet another storm. .

Yet even there, among the path’s mistakes. .
A lucid tenderness kept breaking through. .

As if the heart, each time it bends and breaks. .
Remembers it was always more than “you.” .

So let the fragile plans still rise and fall. .
Let trains depart and letters go astray. .

The thread runs through the ruin of them all. .
A deeper yes beneath the shifting day. .

Walk on, with maps now folded but not burned. .
Eyes open to the blessings you can’t chart. .

For every fortuitous turn you never earned. .
May yet unite the scattered of your heart. .

And though new anomalies will cross your way. .
And sudden storms erase what you have drawn. .

There is a quiet wisdom in the play. .
That turns each shattered midnight toward a dawn. .

…

DCG