There are a thousand ghosts trapped in my hometown.
They hide in every shadow and crack and beam of sunlight.
And haunt me in every breath of cold air
that turns my stomach over and rolls hot tears down my cheek.
I should never have hoped moving 40 miles North could bury them,
when all the roads still lead me back to the same place.
40 minutes to the only place I’ve ever known.
40 minutes to my mother alone in that house, visibly older each week.
When the church pews and the old school rooms and the 4 walls that you called a home start feeling like a prison,
you stop knowing where to run to,
and start running in circles and calling it a life.
When all you have is familiarity,
you forget and start to mistake it as home.
And when you stay still for that long,
you start to know the walls, and the trees, and the bends in the backroads.
And if you stay silent for long enough,
you start to hear them whisper back.
“I want to go home” stopped meaning that house.
Home meant that tiny trailer 2 miles down the road where the memories couldn’t haunt me so much.
“I want to go home” stopped meaning that house, and started being your arms.
The arms that will wrap around me every night so I don’t shake as I sleep.
That will be my home.
Even if it’s a light year away from the ghosts we left in that town.