In a state of cornfields and midnight bonfires,

I am no longer a native of the land that gave birth to me.

I am a stranger – a wooden figurine in a room of people

who point and say: “She is not one of us. She is one of them.”

The ones who decide to leave,

pack their bags and cross the Wabash River.

In a state of farming and barn raises,

I no longer recall which gravel path will

lead me to the country market

to avoid the horns of an incoming railway train.

I am a foreigner in my own home,

a sleepwalker in places of nostalgia.

The outsider looking in; the one who packed her bags,

crossed that Wabash River, and when I returned,

I was no longer a Hoosier, but a remnant of the past;

residue of the way things once were.

In a state once mine, I no longer enjoy the midnight bonfires,

and still wait for the cardinal to call me back home.