THIS ROAD GOES EVERYWHERE, THIS ROAD GOES NOWHERE
Today you told me you wish you were a bird.
I’m waiting for you at that street corner, for the sight of you picking me up on your motorcycle and carrying me away. You say you wish we were a pair of sparrows. Wild swans or eagles or bluebirds. We’d fly, fly up up and away, straight above this town, and laugh triumphantly in their ugly faces. Red, warped, angry, insignificant little shadows. I wish I were a house cat, I reply. Asleep on the windowsill of some falling apart farmhouse, I crack my spine and feel mid-morning sunlight on my eyelids. My lullaby is the coffee machine and the buzzing broken refrigerator and the TV static. I recognize these sounds like the voice of an old friend.
I tell you this town is too big, there are too many people. Too many people whose faces I don’t recognize but convince myself I do. Too many people who say too much without really meaning anything. This town is too small, you reply, when we have the whole world. This town is narrow and dust-covered, with its black and white rules and systems and expectations. I don’t like systems, you say. I hate rules. We are meant to be timeless, limitless, homeless, don’t you see? You and me could be that way. Don’t you think so?
Sure. Yes. Whatever.
I wrap my arms around your waist, grip my fingers around your jacket, bury my face in your hair. I breathe to the sound of the roaring engine and the road rolling by under our feet, and I swear it’s just ‘cause we’re on your motorcycle. It’s just because I need to hold on to you.
I close my eyes and it feels like we’re going somewhere.
Sure. Yes. We can be homeless. Whatever.
I don’t tell you that I think I’ve been homeless all my life. I don’t tell you that I think I’m starting to fade, to fray at the edges. I am beginning not to recognize myself. A home video plays on a tortuous loop in my head, but now I’m not so sure whose memory it belongs to. Is it me? Did I belong somewhere once? How far do I run to get back there? I don’t tell you that I think the only thing that could fix this chasm in my soul is a home. An address; your arms and your hands; somewhere, something, someone to belong to.
We should leave. No—Do you want to leave? No—Let’s go. No—Come with me, please.
Why don’t we leave this town? You don’t like it here. I don’t like it here either. Why don’t we run away?
Sure. Yes. Whatever.
That’s all it takes. You’re easy. You like this. You like being an outlaw, shocking people, performing your own one-man play. I’m not as easy as you, but I’ll try to be. I can pretend to be.
And so you grab the keys and your father’s money. I grab our mixtape and a bottle of whiskey because I want you to think I'm as cool as you. Neither of us think to grab a map. You pick me up on that street corner, it’s late or maybe very early, and you have that devastating, foolish, kiss-me-hard look and Oh, I would die for you, I think on a whim. Oh, I think this might work. This might be it. I might be leaving this town for good, one step closer to belonging in the world, and you might be doing it with me. I might never want for anything else again.
Pick any direction. Close your eyes and point. Close your eyes and dream. Where is home? What does it look like? What color are the walls? How can we get there? Is someone waiting? Are we welcome?
This world is ours, you're holding it in your hand. So let’s go to the coast. Let’s go to the mountains, the river, the forest. Let’s go to Idaho. Let’s sleep under the milky way and yell sweet nothings and nonsense into the canyons. Let’s find a room in a cheap, rotting motel and play house. Let’s leave America altogether; it’s hazy, manic freedom dreams and it’s stale living and alienation.
It would take too much time. It would take too much money.
We talk about it for a while. You just drive. I just wait. I don’t ask you where you’re taking us, and it doesn’t really matter, I realize. People pass us on this road occasionally, driving motorbikes and Cadillacs and RVs. You say they’re all rebels and riot girls, running as an act of defiance. I think they’re all alone and desperate, searching, running towards something they’ve lost or maybe never had to begin with. We don’t say anymore about it.
We stay on this road for a long time. It goes everywhere. It goes nowhere.
Do you think they’ll remember us? You ask me.
Who?
Everyone. Back home.
Where is that?
Where we came from.
Oh. I don’t know. Do you want them to?
I think I would like to be remembered. I’d like our picture in a museum. With a gold plaque that reads, ‘Two crazy, wandering runaways! Watch out! They've got drugs, they’ve got a motorcycle, and the scariest thing of all—nowhere to go!’
Nowhere to go. You have nowhere to go.
And what about you? You ask. Do you care to be remembered?
I don’t know, I say. I’ve never thought about it. I didn’t think it was a possibility. I guess it’s a nice idea. I’d like you to remember me. I’d like you to remember me here, as I am now, running away with you.
I think it’s impossible to not be remembered, you reply. Everywhere you’ve been remembers you. Everywhere you go will remember you too. You leave your footprints all over, like on this road. This road will remember you.
I look at the road. Gravel. Yellow lines. Roadkill. Endlessness. I know this road better than I know myself. I recognize this road before I recognize home.
Home.
Did you mean to call that place home? I ask.
It’s the place I recognize. It’s where my father and mother are. It’s where I came from, you repeat, like it’s something you were taught as a kid.
I don’t really think any of that matters.
What is home to you, then?
I don’t know. But I think it’s out there. I’m trying to find it.
The sun is beginning to sleep in a dreamy blur of gold and orange and indigo. I see us on some old man’s 1967 television set, in some John Wayne, Bonnie and Clyde type picture. The sun sets on two cowboys; they sit against a motorcycle, probably stolen, sharing a bottle of Jack Daniels, probably stolen, whistling and drinking their sorrows away. They don’t know where they’ve been, they don’t know where they are, they don’t know where they’re going.
Did you know the Greyhound goes across the entire country? I ask.
How much does that cost?
More than we have.
I didn’t know that. Did you know this bike can take us all the way to Saturn?
How much?
Just your hand in mine, honey pie.
Yes, this might be it. You might be it for me. Looking at you, I could run for the rest of my life.
Days go by and we’re back on this road. It looks the same. It still goes everywhere; it still goes nowhere.
You’re saying you want to go back now. You’re tired of running. You want comfort in recognizing that road sign, that corner store, that park bench that looks like your first kiss and stolen liquor and sweaty summer nights. You want a bed. You’ll never admit it, but you want your father. You want things I’ve never had.
I hate you for doing this. I envy you. I love that you have those things. I love you, don’t leave.
You drive. I want to ask you to stop. No—not to stop. To turn around and go forward instead of backward. Drag your feet with me through this barren, western, yellow-brown landscape until it pays off. Get fed up and break into a sprint and run until we find a home for both of us.
I’m going. I have to—no. I need to go. I need to find something, somewhere. I’m not like you. I don’t know how to be homeless. I need to belong, really belong, somewhere. I need my muddy shoes at the backdoor and my coat hanging third hook from the left and my toothbrush next to someone else’s. I can’t tell you how long it will take to find this. Maybe a lifetime. I’m afraid I might not last that long. But I have to try. You can come along, if you want. No—I am asking you. I’m asking you to come. I’m telling you that I need you. I need your shoes next to mine, your coat second hook from the left, your toothbrush.
You stop, and you look at me, and daylight is swallowing itself, and all I can see is your face and this road which are beginning to look the same to me, and I can’t say any of the things I wanted to. I’m hungry and lost and lonely. I can’t say it all nice and pretty.
I can't go back.
What do you mean?
I mean I can’t go back, I have to go forward. I have to keep looking.
Go forward to what? There’s nothing out there. We have nowhere to go but back home. You’re tired, I’m tired. Just come home with me.
It hits all at once. You had always planned to leave. You saw this as a playful rebellion, I saw it as a necessity. You were running just to run—just to feel your legs move, because you’re restless and stubborn, young and alive. I’m running like a man on death-row. A lost calf in search of its mother. I’m running like all this running will someday save my lonely, fragile soul.
I yell; you let me. I cry; you let me. I try to hold onto you, to make you want to stay, and you let me. You say you’re leaving, I mumble prayers into your skin, things I’ve been trying to tell you for a long time. I think it scares you. I scare you.
In the end I watch you go. Alone, I watch as you get smaller and blurrier and farther out of my reach, running from me and all the places we haven’t been. Disappearing into the horizon and into my best daydream, my worst nightmare. I try to scream, I try to call your name. You’re long gone.
I look at this road. My loneliness is almost sickening, and it moves something in me. It grows a face, arms, hands, legs, pulls up beside me on your motorcycle and smiles. Devastating, foolish, kiss-me-hard.
Must you keep running? It asks.
Yes, I tell it. This can’t be all there is. There must be a home out there. My home.
It doesn’t have to be something you find, you know. You could make it. Right here, or anywhere. Wherever.
I'm afraid I don’t know how.
I look back once more, and somehow, through miles of dust and landscape, I see you driving through that town. Your little kingdom. Your little prison.
This road goes everywhere. It goes nowhere.
I close my eyes and drag my feet forward.
Rylie Ledford, 18, Florida - USA ✯ IG: @rylieledford_
“Passionate about cups of black coffee, art in all its forms, and passion itself. Is probably watching a film or giving herself music-induced hearing damage when she should be sleeping.”