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Roads Home

Roads Home

Roads Home 1920 1440 Betty Stanton

The paths we take to come home again are longer
than those same roads are away. They arc, electricity

lighting the sullen midnight dark, stretching out in
the dim spaces between stars. Maybe tires move

faster, you say, when they’re taking us away. When
they aren’t weighed down with our failures. These

paths drag years between us, every road leading back
to you. I left so that I could breathe into dust, form life

like I was made of more than this dirt and the things
that lurk inside, but we settle to survive, spores landing

in warm, wet earth. So when I feel older than the roads
we drove away on I think of you, feel something chanting

in my veins that shifts and quakes. I believed that I was
stable, but now I don’t remember when we weren’t waves

breaking on the shore. Grandfather was right when he said
things slip back into place, when you aren’t looking, they shift

and change. He said nothing breaks forever. My roots have
not been moved. He said dogs always know where home is.

Header photograph © Lannie Stabile.

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