Member-only story
You Can’t Go Back
A Poem After Leaving
Don’t drive past your old house — too many ghosts still live there.
The newcomers will have painted the front door the wrong color and
let all the perennials go — even the clematis with flowers the size
of dinner plates, so wine-red you could almost smell those top notes
of berry and plum.
All the nice neighbors have left now, anyway, and
the neighborhood is full of strangers with too much money —
people who look you right in the eye and ignore your friendly hello.
What the actual fuck? you will think, again and again.
You will see a dozen incidents of road rage in forty-eight hours,
and realize you’re following a truck with a bumper sticker the size
of a place-mat, which reads “I believe in a woman’s right to choose,”
right above a selection of assault weapons — and hope to God
there isn’t a woman driving the truck.
Instead, stick close to friends and beloveds, and commune with
the quiet places, that aren’t very hard to find, even now.
Remember that you have a home waiting for you in a sunnier land.
Fill it with happier ghosts. And smile at all who come your way.
