Road Trip by Daniel Romo

How easy it is to underestimate the restlessness of scars. So simple to minimize the relationship of reminder and skin. Neither faulty stitches nor careless neglect are to blame for the contradiction of opening up old wounds. But those who say forget about it assume memory is a choice. That’s no more so the case than where you were born or what you were born into: an LA ghetto, an abusive mom, an introverted state too alluring to be ignored. Origin is the birthplace of adversity. Sometimes personal traumas are even erected to commemorate the occasion. A baptism cleanses, but doesn’t forget. Out with the old; in with the new year, new me. Tracing the potholes on your body is braille for leading you through roads now safe to travel.

​Daniel Romo is the author of Apologies in Reverse (FutureCycle Press 2019), When Kerosene’s Involved (Mojave River Press, 2014), and Romancing Gravity (Silver Birch Press, 2013). More at danielromo.net.