Conception

You should be lucky we didn't go to Walla Walla,

she says jokingly, a peripheral post mortum

threat in her eye providing just enough uncertainty to

absolve my stomach from

polite affirmative laughter.

It has become mine, this thing

this place, this memory of a heavy night filled

with promises made too early to ensure the

permanence of a home with which to plant them

once returned.

And though my feet roam this earth

this place remains a distant focal point,

a master in the mouth of its stolen descendant

as my life hugs the horizon line

in between the setting suns of their 

comings and goings.

It was never yours to take, and yet

It was never yours to give in the first place

And so I live inbetween,

where Walla Walla could have been

and yet never was

as you remind me.