The road never ends.
It only folds into itself—
like grief.
Back then I walked it,
night-shift hunger in my belly,
Virginia fields unrolling like
the back of some sleeping god,
watching,
waiting.
Corn rose on both sides,
spines crackling in the dark wind—
as if they knew I didn’t belong.
Cars slid past,
ghosts in chrome skins,
their light spilling over me
like judgment.
I held out my hand,
not for mercy,
but to prove
I was still there.
I remember Lincoln Street—
the porch swing creaking
when no one was in it,
the smell of radiator heat and dust,
and the attic—
always colder than it should have been.
My childhood house:
a tomb with windows,
floorboards that knew my name.
♠
He stood in the field like a question
no one dared to answer.
Not a farmer’s charm—
something older.
Hood low,
arms flung wide
as if to bless,
or to crucify.
His robe,
mildewed and knotted with twine,
barely stirred.
Yet the air around him
hummed.
They say he’s made of straw.
I think he’s made of everything
you try to leave behind—
the echo of a slammed door,
the click of a lock,
your mother’s back
disappearing into another silence.
He smells like basements,
like rust on your tongue
after a dream of blood.
♠
He was there
when I walked past the fields as a boy—
bare feet tough as bark,
bone-tired from stocking shelves
until the store lights blinked out.
He never waved.
He didn’t need to.
His stillness
was a kind of knowing.
Sometimes I thought he whispered—
but it was only the wind
trying to sound like someone I’d lost.
I never looked long.
You don’t stare at things
that feel like remembering.
♠
The Straw Saint isn’t evil.
He just is—
like rot,
like time.
He is what waits
when no one comes for you,
what grows
when you forget to pray.
He doesn’t haunt a house.
He haunts after:
after the shift ends,
after the rides stop,
after your mother’s light
stays off too long.
♠
If you see him—
arms wide,
catching rain that never falls—
don’t stop.
Don’t wave.
Don’t even think.
Just walk
like your name depends on it.
Because he’s not watching you.
He’s watching
who you used to be.
And he remembers
every step you ever took
in the dark.
He never forgets
the ones who walk alone.
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