The spongy grass,
the pecan trees,
sharing their crop
only every so often,
the fading street signs
and the crumbling
downtown store fronts,
the rusted, shell-filled
peanut mill, an icon
of a once-bright future,
a town kept on the map
by a small and sturdy
Bible College,
a place where cemeteries
hold generations of kith and kin,
stone after stone
marking the choice of many
to return home,
no matter how far away
they’d wandered
from the thick air
and the cotton fields
that surround the town,
returning to nearly the same place
that they’d left,
no matter the moons
that had passed
since they last crossed
Graceville’s unannounced borders,
dreams of the outside world
carrying them away,
but never satisfying them
enough to keep them
away forever.
