TOWN CALLED STARTOWN
I grew up in a place called Startown, North Carolina.
Not because anyone was famous there.
Because that’s what the sky was.
And when the mills shut down, the lights went with them.
What came back wasn’t prosperity.
It was darkness.
The old kind.
The kind that lets you see.
There are things you learn early in a place like that.
Not because anyone sits you down and teaches you.
Because no one does.
You learn how to listen for what isn’t being said.
You learn how to read a room before you ever learn how to leave one.
You learn which parts of yourself make people comfortable
and which parts get quiet real fast.
I don’t remember anyone saying it out loud.
I just remember understanding.
At night, the sky opened up like it had something to prove.
More stars than one county had any right to hold.
The kind of sky that makes you feel small
and seen
at the same time.
I used to stand out there longer than I needed to.
Long enough for the noise of the house to fade behind me.
Long enough to feel like whatever I was becoming
might have somewhere else to go.
I didn’t have the language for it then.
Just the feeling that there was more
and the suspicion that I wasn’t going to find it by staying still.
Some places name you before you’re old enough to refuse the name.
Startown gave me mine early.
Quiet.
Watchful.
Careful with what I said and even more careful with what I didn’t.
The kind of boy who could feel the shift in a room
before anyone else noticed it.
The kind of boy who learned how to carry things
without asking where they came from.
I left when I could.
Or at least, I thought I did.
I’ve gone back more times than I expected to.
Not always in person.
But in the ways memory doesn’t ask permission.
In the way certain silences still feel familiar.
In the way I still catch myself choosing the version of me
that makes the room easier to hold.
I’ve spent most of my life trying to decide
which parts of that place were mine
and which parts were just handed to me
before I knew I could say no.
And I’m still not convinced the difference is clean.
When does the actual truth telling begin? Whose truth matters?