blackwood

merging from the new pike to the old is fairly easy, natural, intuitive. all you have to do is make sure others are stopping at the sign for the off ramp as you veer right & you’re golden. but coming back & merging from the old pike to the new is tricky, confusing, dangerous. it’s hard to have the right vantage point to make the left smoothly & safely. i drive around my hometown & it’s the same as it’s always been except the 7/11 is closed now & the plaza’s sign is faded where it once was bright. it’s all the same except my high school painted the tennis courts red & green where they used to be navy & sky blue. it’s all the same except the checkers is now a pep boys & the burger king moved to the other side of the road & i am not a child anymore, i just feel like one. i don’t sneak out of my best friend’s bedroom to go to heritage’s at 10 pm & i don’t eat mint chocolate chip ice cream in the treehouse & i don’t skin my knees trying to longboard in the library parking lot. there’s a small town in my mind & though i sit in it, it’s not the same, except the above ground pool in the backyard & the paper tree in the corner of the recess field & my mom sitting on the couch in the living room. the caboose still marks the bike trail & the mayor is still the mayor & the sleeter mausoleum still stands in the cemetery. i still pick caterpillars off the sidewalk. & i still am who i was at birth & at 4 & 13 & 16 & 18. i am still me & yet the skin doesn’t seem to fit my muscles anymore & the skull my brain & the rib cage my heart. i am who i always was, minus the bravery, minus the faith, minus the clean lungs. i no longer share a bedroom with my big sister & i no longer sleep with a dog at my feet. i know it’s all the same, i know it’s all changed. i know growth sometimes feels like time travel & shrinkage & shrink wrap. i know that caterpillars become goo in the cocoon & a butterfly still emerges with shreds of memory from their past form. & i know, i do, that i become goo too.