Exodus

by Kate Stewart

Can you live a lie?It’s a ghost town, this place that haunts me, the one that made me.It’s clear to me that I’ll never outgrow Triple Falls or outlive the time I spenthere.I can still feel them all, my boys of summer.Even when I’d sensed the danger, I gave in.I didn’t heed a single warning. I let my sickness, my love, both rule and ruinme. I played my part, eyes wide open, tempting fate until it delivered.There was never going to be an escape.All of us are to blame for what happened. All of us serving our ownsentences. We were careless and reckless, thinking our youth made usindestructible, exempt from our sins, and it cost us all.I’m done pretending I didn’t leave the largest part of me between thesehills and valleys, between the sea of trees that hold my secrets.It’s the reason I’m back. To make peace with my fate.And if I can’t grieve enough to cure myself in my time here, I’ll remain sick.That will be my curse.But it’s time to confess, to myself more so than any other, that I’d hin…