We take roads when we are desperate to find homes and so we leave our homes in search of.

We take roads when we no longer have a home and so we go in search of something other than a home.

We take roads when guns replace cicadas in the night. We leave our doors swinging when silence has stolen everything, and we require booms.

We take roads, just because our feet and legs have insisted, because things haven’t fallen into our laps like we had planned.

We meet each other on the road, and ask where we are going.

Our responses vary:

I don’t know what I’m looking for but I’m sick of waiting.
I don’t know what I’m doing here but I think I’ll keep going.
I was running from something but now I can’t remember what, and now I’ve gone and forgotten the way back.
I am never returning.
I am trying to return.
I put my faith into another’s hands, and they swallowed it, licked it up like honey from a spoon. So now I am out here wandering, searching for a something to fill the empty chair where once my faith rested.

We take roads. We take our bodies outward into the deep parts. We stumble blindly, palms out to catch the rain. We take roads, because they are said to lead somewhere.

I stop a man who is on fire; he is running aimlessly with waxed shoes and sweat dappling his brow. I ask him, “Please, tell me where are you heading?”

He tells me, his chest heaving.

“To the road.”