Although most of my family originally hails from there, being on the road only brought me to this questioning question. Land locked and flat surfaced. Lost in the middle of America like a child abandoned and left to create it's simple state of being (no pun intended) Illinois plodded on and on like any recent Hollywood film, aimlessly to no specific resolution. I hear you saying what about Chicago. Hey, Chicago is great! I've been there many times, but it's still in Illinois. The stretches of barren land broken only by tarmac veins, repeat themselves in a cult-like chant of nothingness interrupted by murders of crows here and there and Stepford towns with glassy eyed children suffocating in the humidity. Ice cream smearing their lips. Best to cross yourself and keep an evil-eye handy just in case of recognition.
When I was a child we visited here and I was so taken by the electrical storms and the fireflies. Lights in the teaming darkness of middle America's
shadows and secrets. Hidden agendas, clandestine bigotry, unspoken desire.
These are the things I learned from my relatives here in this place at 12 years of age. It seems as though these things have not changed although time has ravaged and stolen as much as it has passed by. Forgive my need to express such things. Were they to remain unsaid they would just gnaw at my core like bad infection. Besides, I'm only looking out the window as they pass by, to be forever engraved in my mind like a living tombstone of a time
where innocence was lost for good, for better or worse. I'm not sure which
that might be.
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