WHERE THE ROADS FORGET There is a place where the roads forget the names they carried home, where the rain falls upward and the buried stones remember being bone. A lantern burns beneath the earth with no flame to feed its light, and every window faces west when morning comes at night. I went there once for shelter. I stayed there for the song. Four shadows met beneath my feet, though I could only see three. One wore the shape of a beggar, one wore the shape of me. The fourth had neither face nor form, just a hand beneath the rain, drawing little circles where the roads became the same. I asked the dark a question. The dark became a door. And the road goes on, and the road goes down, and the road goes nowhere when it circles back around. There is a house at the crossing, there is a bell beneath the stone, and something in the silence keeps whispering. Home... A woman left a silver glass beside the dying fire. The wine was black as midnight and the candle burned higher. She said, “Drink if you remember. Drink twice if you forget.” I asked her who had poured it. She said, “You haven't met him yet.” Outside, the rain was falling. Inside, the rain was dry. And somewhere underneath the floor I heard a child laugh twice. There are roads made out of iron. There are roads made out of bone. There are roads that lead to lovers and roads that lead alone. But the oldest road is silent. It has never had a name. It waits beneath the crossroads like a mouth beneath the rain. And every soul that passes leaves something at the gate. Some leave a little silver. Some leave their fate. And the road goes on, and the road goes down, and the road forgets the feet that ever touched the ground. There is a house at the crossing, and a bell beneath the stone, and something in the silence keeps whispering Home... By morning, I had lost the road, but somehow found the house. The door was standing open like the mouth of something proud. There was dust upon the windows and rain beneath the stairs, and four old marks upon the floor where no one had been there. I thought about the woman and the glass beside the flame. I thought about the voice below me that had never spoken my name. Then I heard the road beneath me turn slowly in its sleep, like something buried under stone that had forgotten how to weep. And the road goes on, and the road goes down, and every road I've ever known comes circling back around. There is a house at the crossing, and a bell beneath the stone, and if you hear it ringing you may never be alone. For every road has memory, and every door has skin, and every house remembers what it once was built upon. So I walked back through the doorway when the evening turned to blue, and the strangest thing about that house was not that it knew me. it was that I knew it too. There is a place where the roads forget the names they carried home. I went there once for shelter. I stayed there for the song.
