Rivers and Roads

Rivers and Roads

the road stretches long and mean,
cracked open like an old wound,
bleeding asphalt under a sun
that doesn’t give a damn.

I’ve walked it with empty pockets,
thumb out, feet aching,
nothing but miles and bad decisions
trailing behind me like cigarette smoke.

the river—
she’s different.
she doesn’t ask questions,
doesn’t keep score.
just moves, just swallows.
I’ve stood at her banks,
watched the light catch in her teeth,
thought about jumping in,
letting the current carry me somewhere
I don’t have to be me anymore.

but the road always wins.
always calls me back
with its busted motels, its neon lies,
its bars where nobody asks
why your hands shake
or why you drink until the room softens.

some people have homes,
roots, a place to land.
I have rivers,
I have roads.
they don’t love me,
but at least they know my name.

Buy me a coffee

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There are days when I feel the world expand and shrink at the same time—when the town I live in becomes both a cage and an endless plain. It’s strange, that contradiction: how a place can feel too vast to hold and too small to breathe in. That’s when the urge hits—the familiar pull toward motion, toward anywhere that isn’t here, toward the promise of a road that might lead to a quieter mind.

I’ve always had wanderlust, but it’s never been about adventure in the way people romanticize it. For me, travel has always been a kind of escape, a running from the echo chamber of my own thoughts. Sometimes I think if I could just keep moving—just one more highway, one more horizon—I might finally outrun whatever it is inside me that never stops whispering. But of course, it always catches up. The mind packs light. It travels well.

There’s something about the road that feels honest, though. It doesn’t pretend to care. The asphalt hums under the tires, endless and indifferent, and in that indifference, there’s a strange kind of mercy. You can pour yourself out into the miles, let the monotony scrub your thoughts raw. The rhythm of motion becomes prayer, confession, absolution. But the moment you stop, when the engine cools and the quiet sets in, the ache returns—like it never left at all.

Then there’s the river. She’s the opposite of the road—soft where it’s hard, secret where it’s open. I’ve stood on her banks, watching her move like she knows something I don’t. There’s always that temptation to let her take me—to believe that maybe if I surrender to the current, I’ll find somewhere downstream where the noise stops. But I’ve learned the river doesn’t take your pain; it just carries it someplace else.

Still, the longing remains—the need to go, to keep going, even if I don’t know where. Maybe it’s not really the world I’m trying to escape. Maybe it’s the boundaries of my own head, the claustrophobia of thinking too much. When I stay still too long, the walls close in, and my thoughts start pacing like caged animals. So I drive. I walk. I wander. The movement becomes a kind of survival—proof that I can still move, even when I feel trapped inside myself.

People talk about roots like they’re something sacred, but roots can strangle as easily as they anchor. I’ve never had a true home, just stopping points—motel rooms with buzzing lights, towns that forget you the moment you leave. And maybe that’s all right. The road doesn’t love me, but it doesn’t judge me either. It just stretches ahead, cracked and endless, waiting.

I used to think wanderlust was about finding someplace new. Now I think it’s about trying to find yourself somewhere you haven’t already been broken. But wherever I go, there I am again—haunting the next horizon, chasing the illusion that the next mile might finally make sense of it all.

Still, when I see the river shimmer under the sun or the road dissolve into the heat, I feel it—that flicker of freedom, that whisper of possibility. Maybe I’ll never find what I’m running toward. But as long as I can keep moving, I can believe for a little while that there’s still somewhere out there big enough to hold me.