Smoke In The Pines

I remember the way the smoke curled through the pines, like it had secrets to tell but didn’t trust me with the words.

There’s a weight to the air up here, heavy with resin and rain, the kind of weight that pulls you deeper into yourself, until you’re staring at things you swore you’d buried.

Grandpa always said, “The land don’t lie. It shows you what you are and what you’re not.” I think he was talking about himself, or maybe he was talking about me. Maybe he was talking about the way a man’s past never really leaves him—it just settles into the dirt, waiting for the right season to sprout up again.

We spent summers building fences, pounding posts into the stubborn ground, splitting wood that smelled like a promise when the grain cracked open. We tore down the kind of silences that only men too proud to cry can build, sitting on the tailgate of a truck that had seen better years, passing a thermos of coffee like it was communion. His hands were leather, cracked and brown, but they held the world steady, like a farmer’s prayer or a hymn forgotten by time.

I asked him once if he ever got tired of this life, if he ever wished for more than cattle dust and barbed wire, and he just looked at me with eyes that had watched a thousand sunrises and said, “Grandson, tired’s just the cost of living a story worth telling.”

I wonder if I’ve paid that price yet. If these calluses on my hands and the scars on my heart are enough to count as a down payment. I wonder if the ghosts I’ve carried are finally ready to set me free, or if they’ll follow me like shadows, long and stretching, until the day I leave this place. Some burdens sink so deep into your bones, you forget what it feels like to walk without them.

The road out of here is narrow and winding, like it doesn’t want you to leave. I’ve tried to outrun this dirt road life, but the gravel keeps calling me back, every rock a memory, every rut a regret. And the stars, oh, the stars out here—they don’t shine like they’re showing off. They just exist, burning quietly against the darkness, like they’ve got nothing to prove. Like they know they belong.

I wonder if that’s what Grandpa meant—that a man ought to live like the stars, steady and sure, not needing applause to justify his place in the sky. Not running from the dark, but standing against it.

So here I am, standing in the doorway of a house older than my grandfather’s hands, with a heart that feels just as worn. The wood groans under my weight, a sound like an old friend sighing, and I realize this place has carried me, even when I swore I carried it.

The smoke still curls through the pines, whispering secrets I may never understand. Maybe life isn’t meant to be understood, just lived, raw and real and aching. Maybe the questions don’t need answers, just someone willing to ask them.

And if that’s the case, then I’ll take the ache. I’ll take the bruises and the nights spent staring at the sky, the long roads and the dirt under my nails, because if pain is the proof that I’ve loved, then I’d rather burn like the pines than stand still in the silence.

And when the day comes that I’m nothing but smoke, I hope it rises with the wind, carrying my story back to this place. Back to the pines. Back to the stars. Back home.

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