America to me was always these small towns in the middle of nowhere where there was one school, one church and everyone knew each other and these places were so much at peace with themselves like they knew exactly what they were about— the streams, the stores and the white fences all clear about their roots and their branches and their skies. Unlike the terrible and the dirty and the lit big cities constantly in eruption and change unsure of their multiple different dreams and desires, these small places off the grid held one diner and there was one table and one family that was in its fourth generation under the same roof not tied to a dream but to a place that didn’t want anything. One can sit and romanticize anything. I for one never got over the bluebonnet cafe towns in Texas and the families I met during those road trips and how I questioned then how could one never leave the safe shores and never sail to the unknown horizons and how I have always wanted that to be proved wrong. But anyway these are the roads of America’s solitude and also her passion —the undercurrent of these settlements deciding her future. This beautiful nation with her grand and diverse landscapes torn apart with her ideologies —somehow a reflection of individual psyches, the push and pull of homes and moving roads, of systems and stones, natives and travelers, jobs and farms, towns and cities. The sun is covered with clouds and I am waiting. America breathes slowly this afternoon by the beach and makes a sand castle that I am protecting with my broken poetry. Back in the diner the same soup is on the menu.
Vaishali Paliwal
