the Return

[Deviate]

It painted the horizon like a glimmer of warm sunshine promising to bring winter's first thaw. The sight was just as magnificent as I had imagined it, but somehow equally dispiriting, like realizing the anticlimactic end of of an exhaustive journey. There were no trumpets. There was no limosine. And I didn't see a fresh golden sunrise beckoning me home. Just a mile and a half stretch of forgotten, shadowed highway littered with smog-spewing factories and warehouses in disrepair.

As I turned my feet in the direction of town, I began to question why I felt the need to come back.