Arizona

I’ve lived here on and off for 30 years.

For most of those years I tried to figure out how to escape you. How to be somewhere else. Somewhere lush, green and cool.

But you kept pulling me back.

And now I wonder if it wasn’t my soul taking me back. Back to where I truly belonged.

I grew up in the land of vast green trees, and blue grasses. A place where the summers stifled you with heat. And I kept thinking that’s where I belonged, surely. It’s comforting among the moisture. Among the thick canopies.

But maybe my soul really needs the space. The openness, the mile long views.

Places to go to in the winter, that are dry and warm. Even though the nights still get chilly. Just right for sleeping.

I’ve stopped fighting you. I stopped trying to leave the state with sharp elbows in her name and topography. I’ve stopped believing I was supposed to leave for good and never come back.

Here I’ll stay. Here I don’t have to fight the crowds that also want to be somewhere filled with green.

I may never be able to say I’m at home here. But it’s a good place to love in.