The Places We Leave Behind

BY DOMINIQUE SHAW

This place is familiar but the faces are not. The corners I knew are eroding and changing. These are not my grandparents, this is no longer my town, it belongs to others now. But I am still that little girl, sitting on the beach just apart from the chaos around me, staring out to sea and contemplating the lives of others in the distance.

I left this place, it did not leave me.