"Some places carve your name without asking.
You don't get to leave clean."
—June
⸻
Ethan
She told me she wanted to show me something.
The wind was still that day, but the light had a strange kind of weight to it, like an unopened letter. We walked through the field in silence. June wore her old jacket, shoulders slightly hunched, her silhouette cut sharply against the horizon. She didn't look back once.
We reached a patch of overgrown grass, where a rusted chain looped through a leaning sign:
"DANGER. DO NOT ENTER."
She pulled the fence aside, just wide enough for a body to pass. Then she turned to me.
"Are you afraid of the dark?"
I didn't answer. I just followed.
⸻
At first, the tunnel was narrow. The rock walls pressed in like they had something to hide. Dust clung to every breath, rising in soft ghosts around our ankles. Above us, old mining lamps hung dead on rusted chains, some still clutching cold, unbroken bulbs.
"This place… you came here as a kid?" I asked carefully.
"Once." Her voice was flat, the sound of something closed too long.
"My dad brought me. Said it was a man's place. Told me to shut up and learn how to bear things."
She didn't say she wanted to forget.
But everything about her did.
⸻
The tunnel widened unexpectedly, like the earth letting out a breath it had held too long. We stood in a hollowed-out chamber, its walls cracked with time. Piles of abandoned tools slumped in corners. The air tasted like rust, like mold, like something buried too long.
"Someone died here," she said suddenly.
"Cave-in. Three of them didn't make it out."
She didn't look at me. Just kept her eyes on the ground.
"My dad was supposed to be down here that shift. He switched at the last minute. After that, he barely spoke. He'd come home with coal on his hands, in his hair, in our food. That dust lived with us."
I wanted to say something. Step toward her. But she stood so still, and there was something raw in the way her voice cracked when she said "home."
⸻
I had never heard her talk like this before.
June was a stone—unmoving, unwithered. But here, in the dead heart of the mine, she was saying things I'd never expected to hear.
I thought about reaching out, brushing the dust from her sleeve.
But I didn't.
Not out of fear.
Out of reverence. Like touching her might break something that had only just begun to open.
⸻
June
I shouldn't have brought him here.
The mine is the dirtiest place inside me.
I'd sworn I'd never come back. But that day, when I saw him take that photo—me standing near the edge of the wheat field, an old tractor behind me, and a road no one uses—I wanted him to see more.
Not the golden hour light.
Not the charming decay of a dying town.
I wanted him to see the rot.
"Does this place feel like home to you?" I asked.
He paused. Then said, "No. But I think it recognizes you."
I nearly laughed.
Almost cried.
Did neither.
⸻
We went further, to where the tunnel had long since collapsed. Jagged stone heaped like the earth had bitten itself.
"My mom stood right there," I said, pointing to a cracked support beam.
"She told me she couldn't live under a rock forever."
I turned to Ethan.
"Do you think that makes her weak?"
He shook his head.
"No. I think it makes her brave."
I didn't say anything.
But for the first time, I didn't hate her.
⸻
We stood there for a long time.
No photos. No questions.
Just two silhouettes in a place that had buried too many names.
Then he spoke, barely above a whisper.
"Do you ever want to leave? For real?"
I looked at him.
In that moment, he didn't feel like a visitor anymore.
He looked like someone trying to belong somewhere he wasn't sure he'd be welcomed.
"I don't know," I said.
"I do," he said.
"I want to stay."
The air felt brittle with those words.
Like something long frozen had cracked just slightly.
⸻
By the time we returned above ground, the sun was sinking behind dust-choked skies. The grass leaned with the wind. Ethan walked beside me, shoulder brushing mine.
I didn't move away.
I realized then—he hadn't come to photograph me.
He came to see the place that shaped me.
The cave-ins. The silence. The soot.
And somehow, I wasn't afraid of being seen anymore.