Roads That Lead Nowhere
It isn’t the stillness they talk about,the way the light spills over old barns,or the dirt road that winds like a vein,pulsing beneath the feet of thosewho never left.
It’s the quiet rush of small rebellions,how we find freedom in cracked pavement,how the wind pulls at our collars like motherscalling us back before dark.
The fields don’t whisper—they bellowin silence, an endless hum of being.We know the wildness hereisn’t in the forest or the hills,but in the way a porch light flickers,in the loose screw of the gatethat refuses to close all the way.
This isn’t soft like the stories say.It’s the grit under your nails after a rainstorm,the shovel’s bite in unforgiving earth,and the way time stretcheslike an old wire fence,rusted but holding firmbetween the living and the dying.
We are always rebuilding, always undone,we are the pause before the storm,the breath caught in the ribs of the sky.And we know, deep down,that the road never leads anywhere—it circles back to us, again and again,until we’re swallowed by it.
What Darkness Knows
I arrive first,long before the stars unbutton their coats,before the wind starts bellowing names.I slip between the trees,settle into the creases of barns and barns forgotten,stretch over fields that no longer careto feel the sun.
I am not a thief;I do not steal light,only tuck it away,folding it neatly like secretskept behind locked screen doors.
The town knows me well,knows how I press my fingersagainst each windowpane,cool and deliberate,how I swallow the lampsone by one,until the last flicker surrenderslike breath.
I listen to the things they don’t say—the tired hearts beneath woolen blankets,the creak of fences not strong enough to holdthe years that pile on top of them,the stray dog howling at nothing,because nothing feels like companywhen you’re left alone.
I know where the roads end,where they forget to be roads at all,and I curl into the corners,wrap myself around the placeswhere memory thins and falls apart.There’s a kind of comfort here,in the way the town closes its eyesand lets me in,without question, without fear.
They don’t need the dayto keep going—the fields grow just fine in the dark,the clocks keep ticking,and the crickets know how to singeven when no one listens.
I leave before the first light crawls up the horizon,but they’ll remember mein the spaces where the sun cannot reach—the places only I know.
Map Dotted with Names You Forget
I came here to escape the noise,but the silence feels like something else.Not peace, no—more like a pausethat waits for someone to fill it.The kind of quiet that stares backwhen you walk into a roomand know you don’t belong.
The sky here hangs low,almost touches the ground,and the houses lean into it,as if the roofs are tiredfrom holding up all that history.Every gable a story no one tells,every street named after someonewho never left.
The diner smells like coffeeand yesterday’s conversations,voices that don’t lift for strangers.They don’t ask where I’m frombut look at my shoes,new against the dust,too clean for these cracked sidewalksand weeds that break through concretelike small, persistent rebellions.
Here, there’s a rhythm I don’t know.A syncopation to the steps,the way the sun drips lazilyover fields in the afternoonwhile people nod at each otherlike that’s all the greeting needed.Maybe it is.
I thought the town would welcome me,arms wide like a highway unspooling,but instead it folds into itself,as if it’s saving room for more weathered faces,people who understand the waythe seasons shift, slow and deliberate,and how you can plant yourselfwithout needing to grow.
I’ll leave soon enough,take the same road that brought me,knowing I was only passing through.But I’ll remember the way the air tasted—thick with dust and something like pride—and how the town stayed still,not waiting for anyone.
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(Photo: Andrew Seaman/flickr.com/ CC BY 2.0)
Jeffery Allen Tobin is a political scientist and researcher based in South Florida. His extensive body of work primarily explores U.S. foreign policy, democracy, national security, and migration. He has been writing poetry and prose for more than 30 years. Latest posts by Jeffery Alan Tobin (see all)
