southern witchcraft is
watching flour fall like lazy snowflakes in your grandmother’s kitchen. her weathered hands are kneading dough and your aunts are telling stories about weddings from twenty years ago. it smells like cinnamon and wine. their cackles could ignite a fire.
hiding under honeysuckle and trying to stay out of the noontime sun. the grass is burnt to a crisp and you are sucking sugar from the petals. the air is so hot that it suffocates you. it tastes like the salt of your skin.
digging through trunks in the attic and finding delicate lace from a time long gone. old records that wail the voices of our past – church hymns and stories of the devil. your shirt wears the perfume of history when you descend with old, sepia-stained pictures in hand. it’s you asking your papaw to tell you about the war.
barefoot walks down to the water, mud clinging to your clothes for dear life. mosquito bites and their scabs are worn as proudly as dirt on your nose. it’s lifting palmfuls of water to the sky; it’s the freedom of a thunderstorm.
trips to crumbling cemeteries where even the gravestones don’t remember their names. heat lightning blooms above you in rolling clouds. distant brontide, carrying the voices of the past and making the little hairs stand up at the back of your neck. it’s picking the weeds and saying hello to your ancestors.
mom and dad dancing to some old song. her smile turns her into a young girl again, and he spins her ‘round and ‘round. it’s “I knew from the moment I saw her.” bands of gold tarnished by a hard day’s work times ten thousand. dinner on the table and “give me some sugar.”
funeral casseroles and “she looks so good.” black garb adorned with pearls and a handkerchief waiting to catch tears. stories you’ve heard at least a hundred times. cigarettes on the back porch. lies laced in last wills and testaments. preachers calling out to the lord almighty. it’s the way the flowers already smell like rot.
dumping more sugar into the pitcher of fresh-brewed tea and carrying glasses onto the porch as night falls. lightning bugs become your companions as you run amuck with your cousins. it’s secrets told over the hum of cicadas. it’s that “well, I guess so” when a mason jar of liquid abandon is passed around a bonfire.
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