Something Like Staying

The photo appeared around noon — that flat yellow light I know,

the kind that sits on open land like a hand pressing down,

like the sky decided once and stopped deciding.

The elevator going in a cloud of it, the way those things fall

not dramatically but just: less, and then less, and then a lot of dust.

I used to press my back against the chain-link fence on that lot,

August, nothing to do, the metal leaving diamond prints

across my shoulder blades that I'd feel later in the shower

and not think much about. Just the town

doing what it does to you. Marking you without asking.

Twelve people I grew up with had already left a comment: RIP,

with the emoji that means funny-sad, the face

that can't decide, which seemed right —

none of us could decide about that place.

We left or we stayed and both felt like something

we were still explaining.

I didn't comment. I kept scrolling.

But I kept coming back to the photo,

to the quality of the dust, how it looked exactly

like the light I spent years building a direction away from,

and I felt something I don't have a clean word for —

not grief. More like being caught

mid-joke about the place that made you.

The fence is probably gone now too.

Somewhere I still have the marks from it,

pressed into a version of me I can't locate anymore.