My superman lived in a cocoon in Seattle long before I was born. He lived in cramped apartments with used furniture from Maryland with a flowing scent of coffee throughout each hallway, even at 3 am when he would write poetry to the girl he dreamed of marrying but hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting yet. He wrote on cassette tapes with black marker and got it all over his hands in the process while doing so, covering his tracks in the process of attempting to write them over again for the fourth time that Thursday morning. He listened to Nirvana and once drove by Kurt Cobain’s house in a drunken haze with his cousin Jay and bobbed his head to the groove just while Seattle began to open up to him. It was the first night in three weeks without rain and he could finally see the stars without drowning himself in the process. Jay had a beat up hatchback that wasn’t meant for rainy Seattle but my Superman flew through the overexposed roof and soared into the sky just while turning up the volume and rolling down the windows. The neighbors hated him and his cigarette stained hands with paint on the sides of his jackets but loved the way he smiled when he talked about the stars. His eyes gleamed like an almost forgotten constellation begging for it’s last turn at bat and shot up into the sky with amber burnt eyes, Seattle colored prom dresses and burnt college applications that his biggest hero would too soon be staying up too late at night worrying about. The little girl fell asleep inside the arms of Seattle with his cold quivering hands rocking her back and forth, and let me tell you, oh let me tell you, did this girl fall to pieces like the North Star the day after Christmas. She collapsed into a cocoon and laughed all the way back home, just while her hero Dad picked up the phone.