Cartographer of the Unnamed Sky #poetry

What gives you direction in life?

I. The Prologue of Misplaced Compasses

You ask me what gives me direction in life.
As though life came with arrows or instruction manuals in Braille.
You assume I know where I’m going.
You assume I’m going.
You, reader, with your constellation-stamped eyes
and your directional thirst.

But I—
I once followed a moth into a canyon of broken road signs.
I once mistook gravity for purpose.
I once swallowed a map.
It told me nothing.
Only made my stomach ache with too much Possibility.

Direction,
she sometimes visits.
Not daily. Not kindly.
Sometimes she wears the voice of my dead grandfather,
and other times, she is a crow wearing a tutu
dancing on my keyboard while I try to write resumes.

She whispers in Morse code through headaches.
She calls herself “Not-Quite-North.”
She leaves breadcrumbs made of dust.
She never stays.

II. You, Reading This, Are Also Lost

Don’t pretend,
you who are staring into this alphabet soup I’ve arranged into pseudo-truth.
You, with your bookmarks, your calendars, your linear ambitions.

Tell me—
was it the teacher in 3rd grade who made you think
you needed a direction?
Or the career counselor
who told you passion needs a LinkedIn profile?

You once saw a butterfly land on your finger and felt something ancient.
But you forgot.
You were told it’s not marketable.

So now you chase clocks.
And download goal-setting apps.
And scream into pillows labeled “self-improvement.”

Meanwhile, Direction sits in the backseat
eating cold fries
and giggling like a child who just learned a swear word.

III. I Met Direction Once in a Laundromat

She was wearing a T-shirt that read “Wanderer.”
She smelled like rosemary and unresolved decisions.
She said,
"I’m not what you think."

I asked, “Are you God?”
She laughed.
And then she sorted my whites and darks
without asking.
She said,
"I’m the place you walk into when everything collapses,
and you think: 'Well, I’m still breathing.
Let’s start from that.'"

She left her sock behind.
It was filled with sand and stars.

IV. The Cartography of Your Elbow

Sometimes I follow the veins on my wrist.
They know more about me than Google Maps ever will.
Direction traces her finger along them.
"This one leads to an old library."
"This one leads to the version of you that didn’t give up."
"This one? Dead end. Love lives there. It never called back."

You don’t realize
how much geography hides in your anatomy.
Your kneecaps remember your stumbles.
Your earlobes remember who you listened to.
Your spine?
That’s the north star.
You just haven’t aligned it yet.

V. You Gave Me Direction Once, Remember?

That time you said,
"You should write something strange today."
So I did.
And now you’re here.
Stuck in this sentence.

Direction giggles.
"That’s the trick. You don’t choose me.
You build me with moments like this."

You, dear reader,
gave me more direction than any university degree.
You’re the echo that made me shout into the cave.
You’re the mirror I mistook for a window.

And that’s beautiful.
And terrifying.
And entirely necessary.

VI. Direction Is Not North, It’s a Cactus

Growing where it should not,
drinking from invisible rivers.
Spiky, absurd, flowering once every seven years.
That’s Direction.

Direction isn’t your 10-year-plan.
She’s the weed that cracked the sidewalk
and decided to bloom anyway.

I asked her once,
“What gives you direction?”
She replied,
"A good mistake."

VII. Sometimes I Am Direction

Yes.
I’ve been Direction for people who thought I knew.
I played the role:
offered advice,
charted paths I didn’t believe in,
drew diagrams with crayons of confidence.

They thanked me.
They walked away stronger.
And I crumbled into a whisper.
Because I lied.

I only ever guessed.
But guesswork, it turns out,
is a form of faith.

VIII. Sometimes You Are Direction

You, sitting quietly in your pajamas
eating cereal and wondering if your plants are dying.
You’re Direction to the cat who waits for you.
To the sibling who texts you “u up?” at 2 a.m.
To the stranger on the bus
who needed your messy bun
as proof that imperfect people keep going.

Direction doesn’t always announce itself.
Sometimes it’s a sigh.
Sometimes a playlist.
Sometimes the way you pronounce someone’s name
like it matters.

IX. The Final Confession

I don’t know what gives me direction in life.
But I know what doesn’t:
Fear.
Certainty.
Other people’s shoes.
Binary questions.
Resumes with bullet points for dreams.

Direction is the way my pen bleeds when I stop thinking.
Direction is how my feet twitch when I hear jazz.
Direction is how I remember the smell of rain on train tracks
and think—yes, this means something.

Maybe Direction isn’t a thing I follow.
Maybe it’s the thing I leave behind.
Like footprints.
Or coffee stains.
Or unfinished poems in thrifted journals.

X. So You Ask Again…

What gives me direction?

You do.
I do.
The silence between us.
The glitch in the system.
The sock in the laundromat.
The cactus on Mars.
The refusal to walk straight.
The decision to dance in spirals.

Direction isn't found.
It is made.
Accidentally.
Deliberately.
Messily.

And today,
we made it
together.

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#Poetry #DirectionInLife #Verse #CartographerOfTheSoul #Introspection #StrangeFamiliar #InnerCompass #Philosophical #LostAndFound #Existence