Taken Home

Originally from Virginia--and with much of my family and memories still residing in and around the Appalachian Mountains--there's something about John Denver's "Country Road" that feels like home. The whining violin: the synesthetic companion to passing headlights bending across nicotine-dressed wood paneling. Whiskey and cornbread. Unswept linoleum curls up to meet the refrigerator's when-I-feels-like-it exhaust in an almost-hug. The drowning of puppies too blind to hunt. The smell of venison steaks and horse shit. Drunk and incoherent: an uncle in a lounge chair, babbling at the (n)(m)oon. Wombs stretched thin and low with Love's bounty. A humid morning: daybreak on bare feet in pebbly or sealed driveways where dandelions soon defy oil slicks and leaving. A horse in a field where the electric fence is never on.