I always return here
My origin, my refuge, my sanctuary
I return to my base
To what I was made of
I stand before the start of a slope
A perpetual child before a tranquil beast
It doesn’t make noise, but I hear it clearly
It doesn’t speak, but I understand every word
I lift my neck to see it all
I breathe a history too expansive to be told
I sink my feet into the ground that knows their print
And I walk
I walk on trails that greet me like an old friend
I’m completely shaded from the August sun
by the same trees that loved a girl with a double name
The earth is comfortingly humid
The birds sing the language of the past
I walk
The vines ask me why I had to grow up
The bushes whisper sweet nothings
The rotting fence can see colors in the clouds
Fragments of an ecosystem that witnessed my youth
I walk
I walk and I walk until I reach the summit
I bare my body to the hills that cared for me
Exposed and disarmed, vulnerable to the grandeur
I want to bathe myself in the grass
Plant my own roots and admire my picturesque town
until it erases all my other memories
I feel my heart swell in the shape of longing
I am enveloped by all that’s familiar
My mother always called me Mary Carsen
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Youth is a gasoline fire that only has enough
fuel to burn for a second
A starlight that can only be seen in complete
darkness before bleeding black back into
the void
A sweet breath too delicate for the air to
sustain
Sand clenched into a fist until it is forced to
trickle out
From the second we are born, the clock is
ticking
Like an impatient executioner waiting to
deliver fate
No matter how tightly we cling to our
mother’s thigh or squeeze into cradles
We cannot stop the growing of our hair nor
the peeling of our skin
We are born, we are gifted youth, and we
spend the rest
of our lives resenting our detachment from
the womb
Like infants who refuse to hold our own
bottles,
we crave the simple bliss of our first bloom
Helpless, we watch our own feet march
towards maturity
Nothing is ever the same, milk never as sweet
My inner child cries out from the furthest
corner of my mind
I’m still here
I’m still here
I'm still here
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Different instances of the same soul
Two cavities inhabiting one spirit
Constellations making up the same sky
Creeks making up the same river
A child wanders into the open arms of a dense, silky meadow, carefree
Not knowing it bypasses a chasm of green and brown wealth
A mother follows in tow, eyes keen
Student to a cosmos she can never truly be acquainted with
Two iterations of the same consciousness
A boundless landscape that sparks curiosity, awe, confusion,
and reverence in both
Knowledge and innocence
Divided harmony
Gaps and glue
The child is the mother’s core,
an inevitable force that burns away the nonessential
A violent purification
A steady march back to origins
Plots along the same timeline
A babble responds to a call, neither entirely coherent
Yet both sense each other’s meaning, minds connected by an invisible string
A woven pattern most alluring when made of contrasting hues
A separation that’s warmly welcomed—hands held, eyes locked, smiles reciprocated
Love and ignorance
Pleasant anarchy
Chaos and care
The child is a disturbance to the existing order
Creating ripples that can never retreat
A tiny infinity forged by sacred steps on hallowed ground
Forever in less than an hour
The bare bones of a full life
The same walk 25 years later
Olive and ivory skin swirl in tandem
Eternally caressing yet never mixing
Independent tones that speak their own language
Hazel and brown eyes marble when they meet
Seeing the same terrain but conjuring different images
Breaths off-time but braided
Perfectly collapsing together
Instinctive, universal legacy ingrained in all life
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A mother deer rejects her fawn after she has ventured too far from home.
The calf's scent chemistry changes into something unrecognizable.
How long can I stay away from home until it rejects me?
How long can I stay away until I am no longer the person who left?
The clothes in my childhood bedroom still have a few traces of old hickory.
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I’ve never liked orange, but my mother’s auburn turtlenecks have always made me relax into the chilly winds of November.
I’ve always savored the crumbling warmth of pumpkin bread, but its spiced sweetness is never as heavenly outside of Music City.
I’ve never reveled in shorter days nor decomposing greenery, but it’s always signaled familial peregrinations to open arms.
I’ve always basked in warm candlelight and oven heat, but its soothing burn is never as cozy away from southern accents.
I’ve never preferred the swinging soul of mellow jazz, but its sultry rhythm always completes an hour of culinary labor.
I’ve always tuned my ears to the clunking of western boots on hardwood floors, but its full, rich sound is never as common above the Mason-Dixon line.
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