Two words. Pine Appa. Rolling from the back
of my throat like a hurricane, crooked and unyielding.
One stoplight town lost to a time of church and home
and back again. On the flat laptop screen, I skip
down roads on Google Maps, pixelated projections
of a place I should know. One-story schoolhouse.
One-room church. You could shoot a gun through
the city limits out into a field of nothing. I imagine
him here. My grandfather running up the flat street,
racing the clock to make it home for dinner. Those
burning legs would carry him past the folded edge
of town, but for now, he’s young, knees aching
and caked in dirt. He’s perfect in his breathless
soaring. I want to know if he dreamed of leaving,
want to know how much of me is built on a lifetime
of running, of fearing, of returning just the same.