paradoxical

the Midwest is a snake eating its own tail.

get out get out get out is the head, beating in time with the heartbeat of every new baby born in these states, 

born where the fanged humidity slithers through the cracked sidewalks, born where its the cornfields that are watching, always, scales of highways, hisses of old buildings invaded with shiny new modernism

the heady beat, shout even, of getoutgetoutgetout that's drummed between every football touchdown and every play of that one clarinet in the marching band

the drum major seems to be looking at you while it plays, look away look away

the tail, the glorious and horrid tail, is the insistent, almost incessant, hum of staystaystay that grows each and every step away from the highways and cornfields we take

that last football game is rooted in your memory, every seemed to stare at you but you looked away as your team lost - again and again and again

the old buildings hold all our memories, our childhood homes glare at us as we pack up the cars, removing everything about us from those rooms that we dare to take with us

every time we pass a farm house, a fence too old and worn, a dog in the backyard with a child, a place too close to ours, we'll think

homehomehomestaystaystay

we've been begging to get out but now its finally time and all we want to do is stay

here. with the emptiness and the dead end jobs and the fulfilling unfulfilling life laid out for us

we're eating our own tails, the beat of getting out playing over the hum of wanting to stay forever in our little bubble of world. Forever in our little bubble of childhood. Of looking away.

Get out, to the city to the streets to the lives waiting for us or stay, with our parents our youth the life built for us

Still, we can't decide which is worse - the homesickness or the regret.

The highways barely let us leave but still we drive away, knowing we can't ever come back the same.