West by E.J. Evans

It must have been the sparseness that made me,

emptiness and blind momentum carried by generations of far-seekers

pushing on through the hard purity of a land

that did not want them,

who had little but stubbornness to guide them.

And then, in time, my father and my mother wandered into each other,

became entangled. Another accident of fate.

And then me. Though my life is very different now,

grown and gone in another direction, I am still of the land

of my strange and desperate ancestors.

But no longer afraid of being lost—

all that distance is in me now.

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E. J. Evans (he/him) is the author of Conversations With the Horizon (Box Turtle Press) and Ghost Houses (Clare Songbirds, forthcoming), and the chapbook First Snow Coming (Kattywompus Press). He tweets @ejevans12.