Roads That Lead Nowhere
It isn’t the stillness they talk about,
the way the light spills over old barns,
or the dirt road that winds like a vein,
pulsing beneath the feet of those
who never left.
It’s the quiet rush of small rebellions,
how we find freedom in cracked pavement,
how the wind pulls at our collars like mothers
calling us back before dark.
The fields don’t whisper—they bellow
in silence, an endless hum of being.
We know the wildness here
isn’t in the forest or the hills,
but in the way a porch light flickers,
in the loose screw of the gate
that refuses to close all the way.
This isn’t soft like the stories say.
It’s the grit under your nails after a rainstorm,
the shovel’s bite in unforgiving earth,
and the way time stretches
like an old wire fence,
rusted but holding firm
between the living and the dying.
We are always rebuilding, always undone,
we are the pause before the storm,
the breath caught in the ribs of the sky.
And we know, deep down,
that the road never leads anywhere—
it circles back to us, again and again,
until we’re swallowed by it.
What Darkness Knows
I arrive first,
long before the stars unbutton their coats,
before the wind starts bellowing names.
I slip between the trees,
settle into the creases of barns and barns forgotten,
stretch over fields that no longer care
to feel the sun.
I am not a thief;
I do not steal light,
only tuck it away,
folding it neatly like secrets
kept behind locked screen doors.
The town knows me well,
knows how I press my fingers
against each windowpane,
cool and deliberate,
how I swallow the lamps
one by one,
until the last flicker surrenders
like breath.
I listen to the things they don’t say—
the tired hearts beneath woolen blankets,
the creak of fences not strong enough to hold
the years that pile on top of them,
the stray dog howling at nothing,
because nothing feels like company
when you’re left alone.
I know where the roads end,
where they forget to be roads at all,
and I curl into the corners,
wrap myself around the places
where memory thins and falls apart.
There’s a kind of comfort here,
in the way the town closes its eyes
and lets me in,
without question, without fear.
They don’t need the day
to keep going—
the fields grow just fine in the dark,
the clocks keep ticking,
and the crickets know how to sing
even when no one listens.
I leave before the first light crawls up the horizon,
but they’ll remember me
in the spaces where the sun cannot reach—
the places only I know.
Map Dotted with Names You Forget
I came here to escape the noise,
but the silence feels like something else.
Not peace, no—more like a pause
that waits for someone to fill it.
The kind of quiet that stares back
when you walk into a room
and know you don’t belong.
The sky here hangs low,
almost touches the ground,
and the houses lean into it,
as if the roofs are tired
from holding up all that history.
Every gable a story no one tells,
every street named after someone
who never left.
The diner smells like coffee
and yesterday’s conversations,
voices that don’t lift for strangers.
They don’t ask where I’m from
but look at my shoes,
new against the dust,
too clean for these cracked sidewalks
and weeds that break through concrete
like small, persistent rebellions.
Here, there’s a rhythm I don’t know.
A syncopation to the steps,
the way the sun drips lazily
over fields in the afternoon
while people nod at each other
like that’s all the greeting needed.
Maybe it is.
I thought the town would welcome me,
arms wide like a highway unspooling,
but instead it folds into itself,
as if it’s saving room for more weathered faces,
people who understand the way
the seasons shift, slow and deliberate,
and how you can plant yourself
without needing to grow.
I’ll leave soon enough,
take the same road that brought me,
knowing I was only passing through.
But I’ll remember the way the air tasted—
thick with dust and something like pride—
and how the town stayed still,
not waiting for anyone.
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(Photo: Andrew Seaman/flickr.com/ CC BY 2.0)
- Roads That Lead Nowhere and Other Poems by Jeffery Alan Tobin - December 9, 2024