Stuck in the Stillness

“In small towns people scent the wind with noses of uncommon keenness.” - Stephen King

A keenness shrouded in a like minded doubt of difference. The allure of the quaint lies not in an affectionate embrace but in the lessons extracted from those fortunate enough to escape its clutches. Tracing the boundaries of the backwoods town mirrors the scars etched on my own skin—a repository of memories, no more, no less. A fragment of myself remains entwined in those Front Royal Virginia mountains, as the roots we plant are born from the pieces we leave behind.

My skin will feed the grass cows graze on, the grasses bound to that small haven of humanity alike to the people who walk upon it. Friends and family become custodians of an untraceable history, even as the eldest among them begin to forget. It is a wasteland, rotten in the familiarities of small, the keenness of like minded normalcy. Differences attempt to diverge from this homestead but are fiercely guarded by the legacy of families bound together by blood, yet ignorant of the intricate ties that bind them.

The scent of the wind wretches those unused to the tall pines of the Shenandoah; a warning. Generational wealth lies not in opulence but in the muck where pigs wallow in their own filth. No soul is given leeway to sit but not settle. The children of childhoods past plant their roots in the very houses they grew up in.

There is a nuance in the locality here, a silent memoir predestining these legacies of Front Royal to be planted in a soil not of their choosing. An eagerness to escape fades by adulthood, overcome in its stead by the comfort in small. I do not love the house I grew up in, as its walls suffocate me with past promises. States away I find myself wrapped in the roots of Appalachia; my habits, sown in the landscape I have known since birth. Thrashing about, I battle these vines weaved into my every breath, movement, and unspoken thought; I navigate a terrain where those around me, inert and hesitant, lie as posed sculptures by the predetermined fate tied to our home, roots ringing their necks, silencing their breath.