On the map, it’s a tiny little block that doesn’t quite fit in anywhere. The southeastern corner of Pennsylvania, shot into by the precise tip of West Virginia and finally blending into the harmlessness of Ohio. On the map, it's nothing more than some rounded squares. Pinks and greens and yellows. A few well-placed, five-point stars to show where the people gathered when they finally decided West was too far for them. The black line of Route 70 slashing through the heartland, promising more and more and more and more if you just follow it. The softer line of old Route 40, the road we travel for nostalgia now. On the map, that is all it is.

But the mining valleys and the fields of crops and cows and the hills that jut up and block the sunlight are so much more. They are the coal that turns to diamonds deep in my gut, cutting with its sharp edges into the soft insides of my belly. They are the darkness that settles onto the back of my neck, sometimes even when the sun is burning my skin away in the middle of the day. They are the river mud in my throat and the snowflakes between my fingers, the crisp dry leaves underneath my eyelids and the heavy heat of summer below my breasts. They are a million secrets buried deep in the mines, lost and never thought of again until, one summer, they infuse the soil and grow back up with the corn. They are the rivers rushing in my head, promising me that if I just sink deeper, down towards the bottom where the silt and dead bodies lie, I can find the quiet that I crave.

Sometimes, even now, so far away, when I lick my lips I can taste the river water -- tinged with coal soot and rust from the barges and sweat from little children who have gone swimming even though their parents told them not to. Sometimes when I dream, I dream that I am still like that place.