Soria Moria

Slow pulsing

Red tower lights

Across a distance

Refuge in the dust

All my life I can remember longing

Looking across the water and seeing lights

When I was five or six we were camping in the islands in July

The tall yellow grass and the rose hips fragrant after sunset

Island beyond island

Undulating unfamiliar not far from home

With my fragrant whittled cedar driftwood dagger

In the mildew canvas tent

I saw fireworks many miles away but didn't hear them

And I felt the longing and childish melancholy

And then I went to sleep and the aching was buried

Dreaming, aging, reaching for an idea somewhere other than this place

That could fold me in clouded yearning

For no where actually reachable

The distance was the point

And then when I was twenty four I followed this ache

To an arctic Norwegian cabin where I said, fuck the world

In a finally satisfying way

I stayed through the winter and emerged as an adult

Holding a letter from you

An invitation

So I flew back and drove back and when we met in person

It was instant

It didn't matter where we lived as long as we were together

And that was really true

For thirteen years

And the whole time

Still

Slow pulsing

Red tower lights

Across a distance

Refuge in the dust

In January you were alive still but chemo had ravaged

And transformed your porcelain into some other thing

Something jaundice and fucked

They put you in the hospital in Everett

So I gave the baby away

And drove up and down at five every night

Like a satellite bringing you food that you wanted

Returning at night to sleep in our bed

Cold, I went back feel alone there

All past selves and future possibilities on hold

While I tore you the dark on the freeway

The old yearning burning in me

I knew exactly where the road bent around

Where the trees opened up and I could see

Way above the horizon

Beyond numerable islands

The towers on top of the mountain lit up slowly silently beaconing

As if to say

Just keep going

There is a place where wind could erase this for you

And the branches could white noise you back awake

So I went back to feel alone there

But cradled you in me

In the national gallery in Oslo

There's a painting called Soria Moria

A kid looks across a deep canyon of fog

At a lit up inhuman castle or something

I have not stopped looking across the water

From the few difficult spots where you can see

That the distance from this homeward house where I live

To Soria Moria is a real traversable space

I'm an arrow now

Midair

Slow pulsing

Red tower lights

Across a distance

Refuge in the dust