The Place I Came Back To

I left South Dakota when I was twenty-one and I said I was done with it. I wanted traffic, noise, stores open late, all the things I thought meant life was happening somewhere else.

For a while I liked being gone. Then my mother got older, my marriage got hard, and I started missing things I used to make fun of. Quiet mornings. People who remembered your parents. A sky big enough to make your problems feel smaller for a minute.

I came back after my father died. I did not plan to stay, but I did. That is the funny thing about home. Sometimes it waits longer than you deserve.

This hex is for South Dakota, for my parents, and for the place I had to leave before I understood how much I loved it.