Isabella Rose Denman

Letter to My North by Isabella Rose Denman 

The compass won’t behave again.

I spin it flat on the map’s spine,

but the needle ignores every mountain,

every city that promised distraction.

It only trembles toward you.

I tried recalibrating

held it under running water,

laid it in the sun until it forgot

the memory of direction.

Still, it turns slow, deliberate

as if your name were magnetic north.

Do you remember that summer

we got lost on purpose,

pretending the world had no coordinates?

Now even the stars conspire,

Orion winks, the moon aligns

and I swear the wind whispers your longitude.

I’ve walked oceans of asphalt,

followed highways that hum like veins,

but each mile ends in the same still truth:

I was never navigating the earth.

I was circling you.

If I bury the compass,

will it still twitch underground,

searching for the pulse it knows?

Maybe I should stop fighting it.

Maybe every lost thing

just wants to go home.

Author's note: Writing has always been the way I make sense of things I can’t explain out loud. I love how words can quietly hold entire emotions, grief, nostalgia, love, confusion without needing to be loud about it. My writing truth is that everything I create has to feel honest. Even when I use metaphors or symbols, they’re all built around something real I’ve felt or can’t stop thinking about...This piece is special to me because it feels like a secret, something only the reader and I share. Writing it reminded me that sometimes love isn’t about choosing to return to someone; it’s about realizing you were never really able to leave.