Little Gravel Road Home
I still remember things,
from what I refer to as “the good old days”
and from what I refer to as my childhood, which practically runs to this date.
I need to write things down,
for I don’t know how long I can keep these things engraved inside me.
The real purpose of this poem,
and all those to come.
They’re like tattoos,
those memories are.
Where strong paint coats your skin when new
and faint traces remain when old.
Each living a life that makes up mine.
I remember the day when grandpa took my hand and we walked down the hill.
Lumped in his hand was a plastic bag, maybe of food and drink,
and a bunch of tissues, for who knows when we’ll need them.
We walked down the gravel-strung crossroads, where we waited at a big red poster,
one I now know is a stop sign.
It was where my working parents told us to meet my sister.
My sister with the big backpack, coming home from school.
Eating near-expired protein bars and lugging the sack up the road,
we tracked our way home, up the little gravel road.
I remember the day when my parents and I strung a large reusable back in the back of our silver car,
and drove down to the small store down the little gravel road
A new grocery store had opened just steps away,
signs of new, and people of old
Sales, samples, and crowds of people lined the automatically sliding doors.
To this day, the joy of shoving shopping carts around aisles and crashing into crates of apples are my joy in grocery shopping.
I rejoice every time our fateful grocery store closes and a new one rides into town.
A new name and new prices, with the same old products.
I yearn for the day when I drive down the crusty, old roads down to the Starbucks in construction now.
I park my car and just hit an inch of the white and green lines where one parking slot ends and another begins.
I yearn for the day to hold an iced cold coffee, or whatever 16-year-olds like in 2022,
and send my friends pictures of it with the steering wheel directly behind.
I dread the day when the U-Haul pulls in front of my driveway, and lugs away my hundreds of brown, wooden boxes,
as it is the same day I lock the front door and close the garage doors for the last time.
It’s the day I move into my new life, where my new house is perched on a new road.
It’s the day when I bid farewell to the road I passed by countless times everyday.
I found my road home.
-Jeffrey Yang
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