We stand at the confessional before a stranger who will never become our friend, baring sins that should never have been spoken into air. Some truths were meant to rot in silence, some names never to pass across the lips of certain company. Letters strung together summon ghosts, dragging us back into a moment in time that should not have existed, yet had to, for us to arrive here—the now.
The moment of now, the eternal embrace. The weight of it presses against the ribs, reminding us that nothing is more fragile than the present. Words—once weeds grown wild inside the skull—spill out like poison. A single syllable in the wrong place can set the heart boiling, can summon the memory of the one.
The one that got away.
The one that ruined it all.
The one that spoiled the surprise.
The one who swore they never would, and did.
The one who held all our secrets, and crushed them anyway.
The one who lied, called it love, but meant only that they hated themselves too much to love anyone at all.
And yet, in the endless now, the grip loosens. The ghosts dissolve like fog burned off a cool fall morning, the kind you find in a small Texas town where time moves both fast and slow. Where the wide sky lies to you with its promise of forever, while your bones remember the bite of northern winters.
You long for the sharp sting of cold breath against your lungs, for snow that blankets every mistake and forces the day to begin with caution. If home had a heart, perhaps it would beat by the Maine coastline, in the hush of New Hampshire piers, or in Boston where art bleeds into brick and history. Maybe in Arizona, where red rocks break you open with their silent majesty. Or Utah, where the gods carved stone into cathedral. In California, where beauty feels like a trick, too good, too shimmering. In South Carolina, where a cross glimmers on the mountainside, or where the beaches are sold off each summer like pieces of a dream.
Or perhaps home began in New York, at the foothills of the Catskills, where stillness once whispered the beginning of all things. Florida drowns you in humidity and contradictions, its rudeness masked as kindness, its Keys populated with free-roaming chickens. Louisiana bows to her voodoo queens, her magic seeping through the cracks.
But somehow, no matter how far you go, the road bends back to Texas—where bluebonnets bloom beneath a pale pink sky. Cities blur together, weary with sameness, until you escape into the back country roads where the air is clean and the people guard their peace like treasure.
Peace. That is the only true home. A table where friends break bread without betrayal. Where laughter replaces gossip, where faces see you without judgment—until they don’t. Around here, loyalty is the law, and those who fail it are left in the shadows.
So you keep close to the ones who know you best, no matter where you roam. Because down the street, around the corner, at the edge of somewhere and nowhere—you will find me. At last, finally home.
Leave a comment