From my rear-view window,
filtered through the haze of an overcast sun,
a trail of hand painted signs drift by.
Weathered planks and chipping paint,
promises of produce and shoefly pie,
cutting through the endless blur of
farm and field.

Miles pass by in this way,
undisturbed by the glare of streetlights
and the growing shadow
of billboards waiting down the road.
Who knew there were some many
ways to say the word hate?

One look across the horizon and
I find myself a hundred miles down,
below the mason dixon.
A little red town.

I’m back at that house on a hill.
The one at the edge of the wood,
and the start of a field
where I spent my days barefoot
in my mother’s garden.
Still the little girl
that muddied up her jeans
as she tripped over broken branches
behind the barn.

There is no peace like a day
spent in the trees,
whistling a soft melody
under the old oak,
by the kitchen window,
where I watched the life drip
slowly from the neck of a doe.

My car screeches onward
toward a fruitless escape.
An endless search for some place
beyond small towns with small minds
that I grew to big for.

And yet,
the eight hours I drive
will never be enough to separate
my heart from fields and flowers
it bloomed alongside,

or the way vowels blur and bend on my tongue.
The sound of my voice constantly calling back
to the voices I mimicked when I was young.

– Josie Libonate