Devonne Brown

I ran away from home a couple of times. Once after college I went to Texas for no good reason. The last time with a man to England, half an hour from Stonehenge. We had to get married. I was pregnant. 

I won’t do that again. 

I came back.

I am the same person I was thirty minutes from Stonehenge as I am thirty minutes or less from several Native American burial mounds in the area. Stonehenge may be a cemetery of pagan leaders and followers as well as a place of worship for all we know. Both places are sacred ground. Stonehenge gets more tourists. 

My safe place in the world seems to be West Virginia, under trees on top of hills. It’s where I left and where I returned. I need the deep green, heavy shadows, and bright flowers of summer. I need lightning bugs. 

“You don’t know when you’re well off,” someone said before I returned to life under a canopy of green on top of my mountain. I looked around the room, at the second hand sofa and cat clawed chair. The glass in the vintage china cabinet, missing for years. The cat rolled in some crushed leaves scattered on the floor, then got in my lap when I sat in my chair, purred and warmed me.

I know I feel at home.