The 101 slopes like a spine bent too long.
Camarillo yawns wide in the morning hush,
valley stretching slow, hills bare-shouldered,
fields glistening, half-asleep, half-prayer.

Lemon trees blink slow, bruised gold in the mist.
Figtrees call a name behind a rusted gate.
Sagebrush whispers gossip through chainlink,
its breath full of stories that outlive the tellers.

To the east, the nursery stirs,
plastic sheeting *****,
row tags flutter in the wind.
A thermos, abandoned, rests by a wheelbarrow.
Mud boots, discarded,
stand like sentinels
against the wood plank wall.
No footsteps follow.
I never asked where they went.

Matilija poppies raise their paper-white heads,
and the raspberries, furred with morning dew,
shiver, just slightly,
as if remembering friends
they were no longer allowed to say aloud.

A coffee roaster hummed somewhere distant,
low and steady, warming the wind.
That scent I never could shake,
burnt and sweet.
I could almost belong here again,
but it’s not mine without them.

I worked inside this valley with my back.
With my knees.
With the same hands,
now soft on the wheel,
muscle memory steering roads
as if nothing ever left,
as if the ghosts still ride along.

I pass a strawberry field, stitched in silence,
no voices rising in laughter today,
no corrido escaping from a shirt pocket radio,
no teasing between the furrows,
no calloused hands tossing tools,
only the soft ticking of irrigation
and the hush of work
that now waits for no one.
This silence has been swept, labeled,
nothing out of place but sadness.

I was here with them,
but only as a pair of eyes,
that never opened wide enough.

The strip mall stands like a broken promise,
painted stucco, faded western wear,
alongside roadside markets
missing the opening crew.
Still, the hills lean in to listen,
velvet green with memory,
quiet as folded hands.

Even now, under this sun,
the dust knows who knelt here.
Who sang into the rows,
who fled before sundown,
their names erased from the ledger
but carved into the earth.

And in soil’s hush, their names still root and rise.

They say home is where the heart is.  
How poetic. How sweet.  
How utterly useless when you wake up in a bed that smells like someone else’s city,  
when the walls don’t know your voice,  
when the streets spit out syllables that trip your tongue.  

Tell me—does this look like home to you?  
A place where I walk like a stranger in my own shoes,  
where my laughter is softer, measured,  
where even my silence doesn’t sound quite right?  
I sit in a room filled with my own things,  
but they feel stolen, out of place,  
as if I’ve broken into a life that wasn’t meant for me.  

They smile at me, they nod, they talk.  
So kind. So welcoming.  
So oblivious to the weight I carry  
when I pretend that their way of life is now mine.  
Like it’s just that easy.  
Like you can simply unzip yourself from the past  
and slide into a new skin without bleeding.  

Back home—  
(ha, “home,” like it’s still mine to claim)  
the air was warmer,  
the sky softer,  
the ground held me like I belonged.  
Here, I am tolerated.  
Accepted, even.  
But belonging?  
That’s a different kind of luxury.  

So I go through the motions.  
I drink their coffee. I learn their roads.  
I adjust my mouth to their words,  
wear them like second-hand clothes,  
a little tight, a little loose, never quite fitting.  
And I tell myself, maybe one day,  
this place will stop feeling borrowed.  

Maybe one day, I’ll wake up  
and the walls will know my name.  

But not today.  
Not yet.  
Maybe never.

In the thicka the Perth Road's pretence
millin aboot the fustian
o the ald "Hunter S." basement
(cuz there's nae Scottish writers ti name a pub efter)

cap scrapin the ceilin
Bohemian Monk Machine
gettin set on the tiny stage fir a bit o
funk-jazz-sumin-or-other

a hud ti step ootside
wee bit o fresh smoke
a few lads sauntered past in thir
designer gear an zirconian ears

"let's go in here -
nah, am no into country music"

it's ca'd Maker now but
ah it maks me is restless

that initial feeling
of water as
it seeps
through the seams
of a boot
finding cracks
in the leather
supposedly
   waterproofed
against such leaching
of puddles being
drawn in by
a traitorous sock
willing to sacrifice
the fraternity
of dry comfort
that once it held
flooded with irritation
that will be quenched
only with the offering
of an inane
expletive or two
muttered
under breath
carrying the weight
of a week's worth
of frustrations

Mispronounced chaos sways
With its ellipsis misplaced
And taking away
Its own verdict
That was left displayed
Its own hole
Grown
From displacement
Carrying concrete
Like broken shoulder blades
Mispronounced
Mismatched
Deteriorating outcomes
Commonplace is then found
In its unity
Disuniting it all

Empty streets in the cold of night,
An evening not so much as autumnal as it is of winter.
The roads, lined with little pinpricks of light
that seem to go on for miles, and miles,
without a beginning nor an end.
How does one differentiate a starting and a finishing point?
The laws of physics dictate
that displacement be calculated by the distance one has traveled
from their initial point of motion.
If I have traveled far and wide,
and stepped into the same footprints that I made when I first left,
I'd have come full circle;
my displacement would be nil.
Would it have been better to have been away, exerted all that effort, have gone through all the *****, and glamour,
and excruciating moments of boredom and nothingness
that life had to offer, just to come back to the same spot I started?
Or would it have been better to just stay in place,
mum and silent, with the world passing me by,
like streetlights in the road,
illuminating the way like signposts,
to the end for some, to the beginning for others,
but always -- always -- just a rock in the stream?