The Everlasting

by Alix E. Harrow

Running away, I decided, was more of a spiritual state than a specific speed, so I walked.

I only knelt for a while in the place where the woods had once been, but were no longer, until I understood what every person understands eventually: that I had left home and could never return to it, and that there would never be a time when I did not miss it.

“You argued that a nation is not a boundary on a map or a flag on a pole, but only a story we tell about ourselves.”