The past is gone; the future will not be; all there is is now.

Photo copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved.

The place that I lightly fictionalized into Hunger Road? I know now that that will be my only way of going back. It doesn't exist anymore.

I made the mistake last night of looking it up on the satellite view of Google maps. Everything has been razed to make way for the dull brown fields of factory farms.

House. Barn. Shed. Orchard. Pond. Marsh. Raspberry patch. Cherry tree. Weeping willow. The trees that lined the road.

All gone. All of it.

Also, the house where I was born, backed by my father's garage? Razed to make way for a parking lot. My history. Erased.

I sat here and wept.

The only place home exists is in memory, and in my spirit.

It was not this way only months ago, although the changes had begun. But this has occurred only since I began writing, and my grief is a profound and indescribable thing.

I have wept intermittently all day. I didn't realize the extent of the hold the place had on my heart, on my soul, something far deeper than flesh and blood and bone. I also didn't realize it, but I suppose I was hoping, against all hope, that someday I would be able to return, just for a moment, to bring Wings and show him the land that was my own soul and spirit, the earth beneath me feet and the life that flourished upon it that was my own life, that gave me life.

Now all that remain are the ghosts of the trees — oh, yes, far more than merely the maples; virtually all of them, all along the road — the ghosts of earth and water and sky. Even those ghosts exist only as shimmering reflections, their edges softened, shortened, lengthened by the middle distance of memory, like the image of the willow in the pond that is no longer there.

We say there is a bridge to cross between the worlds. The only bridges I have found are the ones I have built on faith and the aid of Spirit. Some burn even as I cross, flames licking at the soles of my moccasins; others become walled up, denying me a way back.

I cannot bring myself to return to the place of my birth, nor to the place the immediately followed Hunger Road. It's too close, this knowledge that it is all gone, the wound too deep. And so, the next story picks up with my departure from that latter place, a forced migration of my child's body and spirit.

It's a long story, one that I may only be able to tell in pieces. I have no future in the sense that most people consider theirs, since I have no children. The past is gone; nothing there remains. All there is is now.

The ghosts that live in my memory are my only bridge now between the worlds of my past and present. Perhaps this is the lesson Grandfather has been trying to teach me. But our story is a story of migration, and my own migration is not yet complete. There are bridges of the spirit yet to cross.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.