Dorothy
Looking forward to new memories.
Cradles, swaddling thoughts in layers of nostalgia.
Hopping off the jetbridge
Being welcomed by tiny stings from mosquitoes
And incessant creaks & croaks from cicadas
There’s no place like home.
The only place where I can sit down with my friend from birth
and talk about all the woulda, coulda, shouldas
and the will do’s and will nots
in an acrid, bitter tone while sipping refreshing sweet tea.
Where your nearest neighbor is at least two football fields away
Yet you can hear them playing spades or poker or war or tonk
and their gin or whiskey or rum swishing around in the bottle. “No sandbags.”
Strangers wave and nod their heads at other strangers because
that’s what they do ’cause that’s what their folks did and what their parents did
’cause that’s just what we do.
Where you’ll see more churches than ants,
you’ll smell more pine than jacarandas,
you’ll feel more humidity than emotions
you’ll see more open palms than middle digits
A place where history lives right next door to legacy,
Ancient oaks still bear scars from braided ropes,
Heritage and hate still scuffle on battlegrounds,
And blood still fertilizes the crops and seeds.
Back where my great-uncle taught me how to catch when my pops was away defending the land.
Where I came face to face with a rattlesnake and was close to not being
Where the fickle claim to have your back until they turn theirs.
Where the good and the bad, the right and the wrong all live in the gray.
Dorothy had it right.
There’s no place like home.
But we’re not in Oz or Kansas.
A place just as strange, just as ordinary
Where you’re just as there as you are here
You can’t ever be home
If you never let home be you
Think Ink|Thinq Inq 