Across Appalachia

She has a checklist of what she thinks she needs by this age, and anything short of realization is a failure. The list, written in graphite, was meant for updating; eraser marks litter the page, the evidence of the past failing to reach the present. The boxes to the left of the listed goals are empty. Unchecked and incomplete, now the page serves as a reminder of time misspent and squandered. She felt her time had passed as she approaches her fourth decade. She believed that it would have happened by thirty and every day that passes is one less day in the entire stretch of her life to check boxes and make her mother proud.

I’ve been white-knuckling the latter parts of my third decade, and as I stumble through the threshold of the fourth, I aim for a soft landing. My airplane needs refueling, and the weightlessness of air is suffocating. It all rushes in at once, the space next to me might be filled, but instead, it is vacant, dust collecting on cotton seats. I’ve been avoiding lists and deadlines, I’ve been chalking it up to miscalculations and misgivings, trying to follow in the muddy footsteps left behind by the boots of better men, the route takes you up a mountain and back down again through desert dunes and rainforests, the countryside, and concrete stalagmite caves.

The ambiguity borne inside my brain is beginning to fit, melding to the inside of my rib cage and as I sew myself up with soiled needle and thread I hope she’s cruising at thirty thousand. I hope any updates to goals are additions rather than changes in deadlines. Hopefully, a few of those boxes are checked and checked in permanent ink. Hopefully, the stretch of her life is longer than the distance between the coasts and the steps it takes to walk across Appalachia.

Cover art: Lady Agnew Of Lochnaw - John SInger