For Those Who Don’t Want To Go Home

photo by navya shukla

For Those Who Don’t Want To Go Home

second year zoey stephens

Diana was born with her skin sewn too tight and a lust for the feeling of wind on her face. She’d stick her head out the window on rides down the mountain as she dreamed of the day she’d move far away and untether herself from the old roots of home. When she turned eighteen she felt so free on her way down the winding roads through morning misted fog towards whatever wonders womanhood held in store.

Diana soon learned like every other girl with too tight skin and an ache in their chest that running from home doesn’t loosen the seams. She tried every cure for her incurable ails to no avail. She drowned herself in bedsheets, linen and silks, and only found a tighter squeeze with each breath she took. She chased perfection with every step further from her birthplace and every missed call from her parents and old friends. Apathy never suited her, she cared too much what others thought. 

Diana was going to sing the blues and pick a banjo up on a stage. She wrote her stage name in cursive in a spiral ring notebook as she ignored her professor’s lecture. Who gives a damn about Sophocles anyway? Apparently the university system does, and failing electives sets you back a few credits. Diana didn’t care, she sat in the spotlight in a dimly-lit bar and played her banjo for middle aged men who’d buy her a drink to make her feel better for the fact that she sang out of key. Eventually, the bars would stop booking her act, blues music was off trend these days it seems. 

Diana sat in the backseat of some half-strangers sedan with her newest friend group that’d last maybe three months or so. She stuck her head out the window when the car felt too small. She’d gotten to the point where the ache in her chest couldn’t be eased by flings or drinks or the wind on her face. The air down in the valleys didn’t hold the same chill, and the fog was more oppressive than the mountain’s soft mists. 

Diana laid down on her mattress as the springs dug into her bruised hip. The power was shut off and the season’s first frost was curling its fingers between the sheets of her bed. She listened closely in the hope that the night would sing the same song she heard growing up, of bugs and frog croaks and groaning limbs from the trees. The sounds she yearned for eluded her along with her sleep.

Diana was hungry and Diana was tired and at this point she had no choice but to go home. She’d spent so long alone in crowded rooms trying to emulate the feeling of the wind on her face. There was only finite freedom in her solemn solitude, and it seemed she’d failed at perfection each step of the way. 

Diana drove back up the mountain on a misty autumn night, brake lights from the car in front of her lighting up her path. She swallowed back burning tears as she dug her nails into the steering wheel and thought of all that had brought her back to this point. To cool the burn of her cheeks, she rolled down the windows and slowed down to the speed limit. She drove up the twists of a twice settled man harnessed land and the seams started to loosen as she breathed in the air. The tears remained in her eyes, but for a different reason this time. Diana was going home and her soul fit her skin, and she had hopes for the freedom that would come with being okay.