The A344

What remains of the A344 runs past the Heel Stone, Stonehenge

The road used to go right by here. I hated it. We used to whiz past at 60 and I’d crane my neck to get a better view, complaining that the road destroyed the soul of the thing. Sure I can see why the road is here, I said, but that doesn’t make it right.

And that road has been in my head for fifteen years. A symbol, if you will, of everything that chased us out: low pay, high cost of living, you losing your job.

For fifteen years I hated that road. I traced its path on the map and told the story and hated the road. Bloody England, I said, but missed, still, the oh so gentle green of it all

You’d think when I returned and saw the road was gone I’d have been thrilled.

But I stomped around the stones and tried to put the landscape back where I thought it belonged. It was like all my memory was tilted, like the land itself was playing a mean trick. I must have talked your ear off, flinging maps around like puzzle pieces to sort it all out. I greeted the Heel Stone like it was an old friend and I’d have kissed it but I was odd enough with my accent and extreme dislocation.

Thanks to years of blacktop the grass struggles along where the road used to lie. I stood by the old verge and imagined you, and I, doing 60 on the way to I don’t remember.