We tell ourselves the stories we need to hear, need to believe to get by. But I’m tired of getting by. We say Almost Heaven while so many live in downright hell.

They say, “Why don’t those people just move away and get jobs somewhere else?” They say, “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” Well, have you ever considered moving away from the only place you’ve ever known, the land that is woven into your DNA? Have you been able to reach the bootstrap attached to the boot on your neck? The boot that tells you if you want to make something of yourself you have to go somewhere else to do it? The boot that tells you coal is king and Jesus saves and just say no to drugs. The boot that has been in your life for so long you forget it’s there sometimes and have to look hard to find it because you’ve grown accustomed to thinking that this is all there is.

You see, Almost Heaven doesn’t complicate the narrative. It doesn’t reconcile colonialism and tourism in a mind. It doesn’t unfurl the banner of the long line of takers and collect the tears of the coal miner’s widow. It doesn’t listen to the kid who might want to leave or might not want to leave but goddamnit just wants to know there’ll be a home to come back to. It doesn’t speak for the countless voices buried at Hawks Nest or answer the question of freedom formed into a brick made by the hands of West Virginia slave after 1863.

West Virginia is my home, my heart, the place I returned to after too many years away. This is where I’ll die and where, until then, I’ll work with you and anyone who wants to see a different West Virginia, not an Almost Heaven West Virginia.

Williamson, Mingo County, West Virginia.