Dreams come early to city girls longing for the country. Salvation comes through time travel – stories written about days of yore on the prairie. On the bayou. On snow-capped peaks. Trees and amber waves of grain in her mind make the pain and austerity of concrete subside, if only for the moment.

Fumes and sirens and faces blur in the rush like a smudged hopscotch game on a rainy afternoon.

That tree growing under a house yearns for sunshine as it reaches in desperation. But they chop it down because a house cannot rest atop a tree and a house is more important than a tree. Unless you belong to the countryside where trees reign and cicadas sing their nightly song of farewell until another day blooms, which it will.

Just a city girl looking for a home.

Where is that?