is a blessing 

to know its switchback roads by heart,

the way they rise and buckle

like ribs beneath the skin of hills,

to follow them down

into mist-soaked hollers

where the air smells of rain.

It holds history

in quilts stitched by hand,

in gravestones half-sunk in clay,

in the way your name echoes back to you

from the ridge.

It is a curse

to carry the ache of a place

that raised Mamaw,

to feel at odds with the same
patch of dirt

where she ran barefoot,

her shins mud-streaked,

her laughter caught in the trees

like clothes on a line.

To love the land

but bristle at the silence

it keeps.

It is necessary 

to know it both ways.


To taste the sweetness of blackberries

picked by hand,

and still name the bitterness

growing beside them.

To let it hold us,

this place,

in all its contradictions,

beauty tangled with sorrow.


To remember

we are still becoming,

same as the land.
It is how we survive

ourselves,

each other,

this world.