every time
i come to stephenville
it seems to rain
i have come to
appreciate the dour
little town
with its constant
construction and
purple accoutrements
because of the college

the downtown square
houses a rustic facade
around the historic
yellowed brick town hall
only the business names
have changed throughout
the century and a half
since the town founding

my brain is breaking
worse and worse
the lost periods grow
longer and dissociation
feels less jarring
than a welcome escape
so the consistency of
stephenville raining
keeps me grounded enough
to make it back home

i just have to not allow
myself to ponder the definition
of home too deeply or risk
drifting into the gravitational
fluctuations of that particular
ever hungering black hole
where the meaning of home
is another arbitrary
four letter synonym for lost

i sit in the rain on the square
soaking in the untamed spirit
of the wild west permeating
the simple architecture built
to simply weather the grit
in the howling western wind
letting stories percolate as
another ode to loss blossoms
in my weary, fractured, mind