why dad stopped running.

I don’t come from many places.
My first house was a
quiet box of suburbia
in a gated community
with a fence as high as balance
to keep my family’s sanity
from escaping,
I always got the feeling there
dad was running
from something.
Our neighbors were
adults too rough
to deal with childhood’s
bicycle tracks
and chalk portraits.
We were 45 minutes
from the only two places
I ever went:
church and school.
We were also
3 ½ hours
from the only friend I had,
but please,
I am far from looking for pity,
just qualifying that I too
wish to be entitled
to this breath.
I used to think
there are things
we never grow out of,
and this December planted nothing
but the terrifying idea that I had added
to my fear of the dark
to a terror of a white called snow
so make no mistake:
humanity has a footprint
like a shadow
and this one’s a stamp
too permanent
to hide from,
I wonder if angels see in color,
if they also have felt
their hearts in their throats
when they realized it is possible to fear
both black and white
and for all the words of the bible
I believe to be true
most days heaven
sounds to me
the way I imagine
a refugee camp
sounded to my Nepali friends
who live down Division
nine and a half months ago
before they spoke English,
an escape,
something safer,
but not home.
When I was eleven,
our second house was a skyscraper
it was green then
and smelled like
dad unlearning the
programmed uselessness
his parents once taught him
by their absence,
he rebuilt my room
with my mother’s father
and began to
understand significance
I don’t come from many places.
But I too know
how to spell the word “lost”
I too know exactly
how hollow a chest can be
I was never one to
pretend that I am made
of anything more than
well-placed shots in the dark
call me lucky.
I used to think
there are things
we never grow out of,
and if there are,
humanity is first among them
but if you asked me,
I’d tell you what I learned
the day dad stopped running:
I’m not looking for heaven,
the streetlamp eyes
lining the aisles of this room
assure me
heaven is already here
and we are not angels
but I dare you,
welcome the days
you feel your pulse in your throat,
tattoo fire on your breath,
and breathe the air so warm
the snowmelt is as loud as
the darkness evaporating.
If you’re looking for an escape,
you’ve landed on
the wrong edge of the planet,
but if you’re willing to frame your self-portrait
with bicycle tracks
I’ll bet you everything I’ve ever believed in
that we’ll make the angels jealous
of this light spectrum we have,
called “home.”