Jordan A. Leturgez

If I could, I would gather the scattered pieces
of your laughter--those splintered, quiet ones--
and sew them back into the seams of your days,
soft as tongue against the inside of a cup,
so heat returns and hands remember how to hold.

If I could, I would unlearn the clock's sharp teeth,
loosen its jaw and set the hours adrift,
so mornings could be slow, forgiving things
and yesterday might lean back into your shoulder
without asking for a reason.

If I could, I would press my palms to the map of your sorrow
and trace rivers backward until they forgot their course,
turning floods into streams that find green,
making room for wildflowers to gossip with the wind
about small, unremarked miracles.

If I could, I would bottle quiet for you--
a translucent thing smelling of rain on hot pavement,
a lantern you could carry in a pocket
to find your feet on nights that taste of doubt,
to read by when the world forgets your name.

If I could, I would teach the stars new words
so they might spell your truth across the velvet,
but even constellations would need time to learn,
and I am only one mouth, one set of hands,
full of good intentions and less than miracles.

So I cannot pluck grief from your throat like a thorn,
nor stitch the past into something painless.
But if I could not mend the sky for you,
I will stand beneath it--arms open as a small harbor--
and keep a light on until your harbor remembers how to come home.

I pack nothing but a pocket of sky,
a ticket folded into the palm of midnight,
and the small, stubborn ache that says
there is more than the room I wake in.

The city hum unhooks from my wrists--
neon fingers loosen, the elevator sighs,
and I step into the throat of a road
that swallows maps and spits out stars.

Mountains arrange themselves like questions,
the sea opens like an honest wound.
Each mile is a slow unbuttoning
of habits, names, calendars that cling.

I pass houses with porchlight confessions,
fields where the wind weeds out lies.
Time thins, becomes a single drawn breath,
and in that breath I remember my own name.

Somewhere between the last traffic light
and the first honest sunrise,
I trade the loudness of others for the music
of my own untidy, human heart.

To get away is not only to leave,
but to arrive--bare, unarmed, forgiven--
to meet the raw map of what's left over:
the child, the weathered hand, the stubborn want.

I learn that distance can be a gentle teacher,
that silence keeps the languages of loss,
that coming back is not the same as returned--
I will bring home new questions, softer hands.

There is no grand reveal, only the simple fact:
the world is large enough for falling and for flight,
and in the quiet between departures
we gather the courage to call it "home" again.

Take the fist of your breath and strike the sky --
let your voice become an avalanche of light.
Stamp the metronome of your heart into the pavement,
so even sleeping cities wake and count their scars.

We are the hammer against the quiet glass,
the drumbeat that dares the mountains to move.
Sing until the rails bend like willow strings,
and the old maps fold into new constellations.

Let your laughter be a tectonic line:
where doubts once split, let wonder rise.
Plant your stubborn feet on the tongues of clocks --
time is a board we can tilt and make swim.

Rock the world not just with thunder but with seed:
small hands that feed the hungry hours,
soft hands that stitch the torn days together.
Meet the dark with a stubborn, luminous song.

When fear gathers like fog, become the wind.
When sorrow presses like stone, be the stream.
Shake the world awake -- not to break, but to build,
so every quiet corner learns to sing again.

Turn the lights low until the city hush becomes a snare,
let the bass press its palm against the ribs of night.
We move like weather -- patient, sudden, uncontained --
rocking over the beat until our shadows learn the rhythm of flight.

Thump, a language our feet have always kept secret,
click of heels, the tongue-snap of breath,
a streetlamp blinked in time with a heartbeat,
and every broken thing begins to stitch itself to the measure.

There is a DJ in the chest, fingers spinning constellations,
scratching grief into gold, looping joy until it learns to soar.
We ride the vinyl valley where memories click and slide,
hands aloft like sails, catching the agora of sound.

Rocking over the beat is a small, sublime rebellion:
to laugh where silence tried to carve a longer name,
to push a stubborn foot into the wildfire of the floor,
to find a pulse that calls you home again and again.

Bodies translate histories into motion,
knees remembering lullabies and riots both;
a child's clap, an elder's nod, a lover's whispered syncopation --
all of them braided into a drum-line of becoming.

So bend, break, bend -- the music forgives nothing and everything,
it teaches us to fall with grace and rise with the same drumstick.
We are wind and engine, river and brick, heartbeats multiplied,
rocking over the beat until the city remembers how to dream.

When the last cut fades and the night exhales its echo,
we keep something of that rhythm in our pockets, heavy and true.
A little stubborn courage, a pocketful of thunder --
and the quiet, knowing that anywhere, anytime, we can begin again,
rocking, always, over the beat.

I stand at the crossroads with a pocket full of questions,
the map of my life folded into the crease of my palm.
Around me, voices bloom--soft, sharp, muffled--
each a lantern swaying in the night with its own small truth.

I ask the river for counsel; it answers in currents,
teaching me how to let go of stones that keep me anchored.
I ask the old tree for counsel; it answers in rings,
teaching me how patient grief can become a steady trunk.

Neighbors hand me phrases like smooth pebbles:
"Try this," "Don't," "Wait," "Leap."
Some glint like fortune, some bruise like warnings.
I hold them up to the light, trying to decide which will fit my pocket.

Advice smells of other people's forks in the road--
the taste of their victories, the ache of their regrets.
It is not a map but a mirror and a compass:
it will show the shape of a hand that has gripped a knife,
and it will point, faintly, toward a direction that once served.

I learn to ask with a soft mouth,
to invite the world's counsel without swallowing it whole.
To sift the gold from the gravel by touching it to my tongue;
to hear the thread in each story that vibrates true in my own bones.

Sometimes the clearest answer is a silence,
a pause where no one lays a stone on your path,
and that is advice too--permission to listen to the hollow
inside you that already remembers the way.

Advice is a lantern offered by a stranger,
a quilt stitched from many hands, a borrowed coat for cold nights.
It will warm you for a season, guide a step or two,
but the road asks you to walk, and your feet will learn the shape.

So I gather the lanterns, the rings, the river's soft lessons,
and fold them into the pockets of my coat.
I will carry others' light until my own ember glows enough,
until I can make my own map by burning midnight into dawn.

If you have something to say--speak it like bread handed across a table.
If you are the one who seeks--receive it like fire, with care.
Advice is love in fragments; choose what fits, and let the rest go.
The rest--like rain--will find another thirsty field to bless.