1.29

Somewhere in Central Missouri, there is a small nothing where there used to be
a farmer's field
a mound of dirt
a skeleton once revered
a man once alive
a dagger
some beads
that is, until the plow turned over some small something, and the farmer (concerned) called on the smartest person he knew, and the old man whose only identification was Professor Soretlan rode down from Sturgeon to turn over the old earth and uncover what once was, to piece it together and send it to Massachusetts, or Pennsylvania, or someplace else back East. They could have never known that a hundred and fifty years later, I would live ten miles down the creek from the old nothing. They could never know my love for the small creek, of the maps I built by hand, of the hours I spent pouring over its history, of the trek I took not once but many times just to put in a canoe so I could scrape along with a friend. They could have never known the intensity some young fool would feel for a bit of land he didn't own. They could have never known how much rage I felt over the cold day on someone else's bones in someone else's dirt in someone else's Missouri in a small nothing where there used to be.