Directions for Your Return
​

If you fall from the tower, it's already burning
Look for a white bird on the way down.
Turn off your phone. Don't eat or drink.
Never sleep
Follow the dog. The middle head is wise,
the left head bites. The right is ugly, but kind
The sun will rise. Find the beach by scent.
Write the names of old lovers in the sand, the waves
will erase them.
Braid seaweed into your hair.
No window-gazing Penelope, you are brine-tongued and lovely
The islands talk of nothing but your arrival, bored with their sun-bleached shoulders, their glossy
fruit. Discarded outfits litter the coasts as gossip
flies like pollen all along the archipelago.
You will come by air, feathers sun- charred at the tips
or by sea, stars clinging to your dress.
Your eyes lead the mariners north. Tell them stories to pass the time.
Don't worry if they weep and stuff their ears with rags,
the great baleen mammals will gather to listen, carwash mouths open to the streaming moon.
When you see land, message by seabird.
Paint your toenails the color of pearls
your fingernails the shiny black
of my station wagon.
Think about
my heated seats.
You'll know you're close when it starts to rain.
 
 
 

Michelle Ruiz Keil is a short story writer, novelist, and playwright. Her play, Pure Gold Baby, was produced twice in Portland, Oregon. She has just completed her first novel. Michelle also teaches acting and writing to youth, co-created a literary curriculum that empowers sex workers to tell their stories, helped run a free school, and has a way with animals. A Bay Area native, Michelle now lives in a cottage in the woods in Portland, Oregon.