Greenland

I think the air was better there

Kinder, softer - empty,

more forgiving to lungs looking for it

It felt godless

barren of the divinities that cradle empires and

Holy mothers who nurse fear

A land with no one looking for it

Mountains gilded in gold

Trailing steeps like tear tracts burned

Down its face –

Nothing

begging to be conquered

But believed

I think I would have climbed one if I stayed

Hiked the whole western way barefoot,

Raising bloody palms to the sky

Dug my nails into rocks until they blunted

Like teeth without a taste for blood

And I think I would have melted into the mud

when it rained

And disappeared

In a different way than I did

when I was really there-

A pile of tarnished skin and flesh standing limp

On the falling scores-

When I vanished wrapped in wind

from the North Sea

Where sharp whips stroked my cheek

Whispering sweet soothing sounds of solitude

(my own solemn soliloquies)

When someone saying my name

felt like a prayer to me

From somewhere almost tangible

Reaching through a premature purgatory

Where I swallowed mouthfuls of sand from Eastern beaches

And when my heart beat outside of my body

But from somewhere deep underground

In a wooden box

Buried in oxygen-rich dirt