Jude Mercer

‚Where I Lay My Head‘ (inspired by ‚Wherever I may roam‘ - Metallica) I’ve never been good at staying. Places blur together after a while—motel rooms with thin walls, campsites that smell like smoke and damp earth, roads that exist only to move you on. I don’t leave pieces of myself behind. I pass through, untouched, unclaimed. That’s what I tell myself freedom looks like. Then there was you. We met in a place neither of us intended to remember, the kind of stop you make when you’re tired of pretending you’re not tired. One night. No past, no future. You didn’t ask where I came from. I didn’t ask where you were going. That absence felt like respect. Like safety. We lay close without trying to own each other, your breathing steady against mine, your hand warm on my chest as if it belonged there. In the dark, you felt unguarded, real in a way that didn’t demand anything from me. Morning came quietly. No hesitation, no promises. You moved with the calm precision of someone who knows how to leave without tearing something open. Before you walked away, you pressed something into my palm—small, ordinary, almost forgettable. I closed my fingers around it without knowing why. You drove off first. That’s how roamers do it. I stayed long enough to convince myself it was just another night, just another body, just another borrowed place. But after you, every road felt harsher, every stop louder. I kept moving because stopping didn’t make sense anymore. Somewhere between dusk and dawn, without warning, without permission, you turned into the quiet constant I carried with me. Not a destination. Not a promise. Just the first time staying had ever felt possible. (34, 6‘5, image from Pinterest)