leaving this home will be a dream that holds itself,
a place where blurred memories’ edges permeate imagined futures.
 
 
recently, a child on the subway said,
“there’s no such thing as the middle of nowhere anymore.”
 
his observation hurt (at first)
a pinprick of the heart: each beat forces lost truths to fill an unsuspecting ribcage
whose own resolve will break, 
because each drop dives deep into the shadowy abyss
the darkness between the bones curses its middle, nowhere,
for not being designed to hold them
 
as the train’s rusty wheels click-clacked below our tired feet I thought:
my idea of nowhere is somewhere, where
the road narrows and the deep pine forest thickens
the loon calls skip the surface of a silent lake at the end of a muddy trail
the lobster boats bob & bump weathered docks’ edges
the blueberries fill fields that have not forgotten
they were once in the middle of, or perhaps tiptoeing on the cusp of nowhere
 
because now everything is everywhere
whether it wants to be or not
but somewhere there is a place
a tiny woods-between-worlds where dreams set themselves free
and rest their heads between pages found in the cemetery of forgotten books
that is somewhere, in the middle of nowhere
the somewhere I will call home