Without self-orientation, we borrow a north,
press a human face into our glass of reflection.
A voice becomes latitude, a shoulder becomes shore,
a name, the pin that steadies the map.
We call it love, call it safety, call it home —
move lightly then, unafraid of distance,
because somewhere a fixed point waits,
a person, holding still while we pass through days.

We cross borders with borrowed confidence,
step through languages as if through water.
cities unspool beneath our feet like ribbon,
customs blur, clocks dissolve, seasons slide.
We believe the center travels elsewhere —
that meaning has an address not our own.
Our orbit widens because we trust
another gravity to keep us whole.

But compasses fail when handed outward,
magnets tire of pointing away from the source.
What we call anchoring is often leaning,
what we call home a careful forgetting.
We shrink our vastness to fit a single doorway,
place the measure of self in another’s hands,
and call the narrowing devotion,
call the ache proof of belonging.

Orientation, though, must return inward —
the soul remembers its quiet coordinates.
Breath becomes axis, awareness becomes ground,
attention, a steady, interior sky.
We are not the satellite —
we are the energetic field.
Not the traveler circling a light, but the light.

The universe was never elsewhere;
it has always been the home that moves as us.