West West West

You don’t come to me in dreams

as much as you arrive 

when I drive the stretches of farmland

in the drier parts of winter.

You are beside me, pointing to the way the trees at the edge of the farms bend.

The paths away from the roads, dirt and asphalt both.

I used to look at you,

I’d see your crooked finger 

think that inviting smile you presented

was a covert sneer.

You became the fields and the trees.

I sneered at your lack of polish.

The clipped words. 

The anger you displayed when one of the farms disappeared for another development.

“This used to be a fertile place.”

I didn’t believe you.

I’ve been here too long, I think.

I’ve felt the backwards movement of things. Seen the way I move forward and the land slides against my feet. Fighting a current of ground, pulling me closer to something I did not want.

I Felt superior to you.

Known it in my ligaments and tendons that this was not the place for me.

There was too much I couldn’t say to you.

Fear that you’d see what I was thinking.

Better to smile and nod,

to dream of the day I’d leave these roads forever.

You, though. 

You had something in the way you spoke to me.

Some truth underneath the lilt of your broken words.

And you were persistent.

One day, long after I believed I’d be gone, I noticed

your finger pointing

beyond some bent or spent spot that blurred when driving by.

Pointing instead

to the unending sky

as we crescendoed

to the top of a green hill.

On a slow, sunny day.

Leaving the road, sunshine enveloping us. falling upward into its endless reach.

“All of this, is mine.” You said.

You waved your arms in large circles.

Your smile felt real.

And for the first time, while we continued to drift past clouds and into the an even greater space, I accepted

A truth.

For all of the things I was so sure about,

I knew that you were, in fact, 

beautiful

All along.