-it’s too early to be sweating, but you can taste the salt in your mouth already. across the street, your neighbor informs you that it’s the humidity, not the heat.
-a pitcher of sweet tea covered with cling wrap sits on your counter, and your friend’s counter, and your grandma’s counter, and everyone’s counter. you are drowning in sweet tea, and you never look at it to see what skims the surface.
-you go outside for a cigarette, until you hear the slow whine of mosquitos. you don’t even feel them on your skin anymore, but you wake up the next morning covered in tiny bites. you can’t get away.
-you drive on a deserted road, not ever the interstate. in every direction there are fields for hours and hours, and you wonder if you’re going anywhere at all.
-there are plastic signs along the road. HELL IS REAL, they read, REPENT. next to you is a peeling billboard with a phone number on it, promising to tell you where you go when you die. you don’t call it.
-you’re still driving. occasionally, you wonder why there are so many signs for baptist churches along this road. there hasn’t been a house in miles. who even attends the services?
-the old woman who lives next to you calls you darlin’ and tells you how much you’ve grown. the way her accent deepens when she says “y’all” reminds you of someone in your past you can’t quite remember. did you always live here?
-the grocery store you stop at smells of pipe smoke and dust and boiled peanuts. there are glass coke bottles lined up against the wall, across from a dollar-store rack of ribbons and Roll Tide printed shirts, and the man at the counter is the only one in the store. you wonder if he makes any money anymore.
-when you pass the truck selling greens and tomatoes, you can’t tell if you should have stopped to buy some. the worn ford pickup has an ichthys next to white sticker silhouettes of two adults and three children on it. the children are nowhere to be seen.
-when it gets dark late in the summer, you can hear the buzz of cicadas. they kept you awake when you were a child, but now you have to strain to realize they’re outside. abandoned shells cling to your veins.
-a sheen of sweat covers your skin at night as you kick off your sheets. the house breathes underneath you and you cannot calm it. nobody’s doors are locked. everybody knows everybody around here, they say.
theartofmadeline
romaincrisis
ellievsbear
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
blakekathryn
gamechangershow
andulkaphoto
turnnoffyourmind
stormborns
