Ohio Behind Us

When we ask our mother how long we'll be here,

sometimes she says for a while and sometimes
she tells us not to ask anymore
because she doesn't know how long we'll stay
in the house where she grew up
on the land she's always known.

When we ask, she tells us
this is where she used to belong
but her sister, Caroline, our aunt Kay, has moved
to the North,
her brother Odell is dead now,
and her baby brother, Robert, says he's almost saved
enough money to follow Caroline to New York City.

Maybe I should go there, too, my mother says.
Everyone else, she says,
has a new place to be now.

Everyone else
has gone away.

And now coming back home
isn't really coming back home
at all.

‪Jacqueline Woodson‬, Brown Girl Dreaming