I have to hit the trail tomorrow. In the last four weeks, I have traveled back and forth home more times than I did in the last 8 years.

In the last years, my mother either visited us or stayed at two of my brother’s home for extended periods of time. I visited her at my brothers’ and spared myself the return to a town I knew was waning every day in the crevices of historical oblivion.

With the recent rains punishing the old (never-again-repaired roads) people are literally hitting the trail in some areas. Some sections of the main road from Yaguaraparo to Carúpano look like the whole territory used to belong to the USSR and had gone through the reannexation process, except not a single bomb was dropped. Pure negligence, populism, and corruption did the trick.

I used to like traveling. Coming back home meant seeing old friends, relatives, and seeing some improvements. Now, families are scattered all over the world; old friends have left, died young, or grew distant in their precipitated aging. As for change, much hasn’t in decades, except that whatever was old, dirty, or broken is now older, dirtier, and devoured by the vegetation. The formerly lively streets of the barrio are now desolate at any time of the day. The kind of desolation we have at night because of the itchy moths, we feel it in broad daylight as a slapping reminder of how little of our identity as a people is left.

Thanks for your reading

This was my entry to @mariannewest and @latino.romano’s 5 Minute Freewrite: Tuesday Prompt: HIT THE TRAIL. You can see the details here.

Make sure you visit the Freewrite House!!!