Twenty-Two Miles

Twenty-two miles is not an appropriate distance between
my current home and my childhood one. Too easily crossed,
twenty-two miles afford little conversation
about differences in weather, time, news. And yet
when I find myself looking at commuter-rail timetables,
I start to think maybe going home shouldn’t take
so much effort; maybe twenty-two miles of unknown territory,
an entire un-broached borough, means I’m quite a ways away.

In terms of net distance, I have traveled one mile per year
in the direction of the nearest civilization hub
around which my childhood life was already oriented,
anyway. You’d think I’d eked out a fairly cheap existence
that way, but no. It’s expensive, traveling elsewhere just enough
so that twenty-two miles from home seems reasonable,
that in fact you start to believe it’s possible to possess multiple homes
with the same TV weather-alert tickers and breaking news. In fact,
each night at the same instant on the same channel,
both my TV and my parents' ask if we know where our children are.

The twenty-two miles between us are fairly ugly,
as miles go, and neither destination is quite worth it.
I know nothing of the stops along the way;
whole towns are just signs I maybe use as landmarks
to report progress on journeys I generally wish
I wasn’t making. Twenty-two miles for twenty-two years,
net distance averaged by age doesn’t account for how I got here,
but it seems to be saying I can’t stay.