“You are eight years old and you find a snake in the dirt on your way to school. It’s been cut open something animal and ragged, left out to the dust and sun. Your friend dares you to touch it. But you don’t because it’s a snake and there are stories about kids out here who never respected dead things. You are thirteen years old and you drive your father’s old truck out past the city limits. The desert is blue and orange and red, but everything turns purple at night. Something in the distance howls and you shake with it, lock your doors when you get home. You are fifteen years old and you realize the lights out over the desert aren’t signs. No motels out there; nothing, but the empty expanse of the desert. No one looks at the lights for too long. That’s what your mother says, anyway. You are seventeen and you wake up because a car rips past your window too loud, blowing smoke. You think about leaving. A boy with quick fingers asks you why. “Nothing ever stops out here. The dust never settles.“ He is looking at you in the reflection of a glass bottle that used to be tequila. He asks: “Why would you want it to?” You are twenty-one and you know, you know, you know: there are too many dead things out here. Snakes and coyote and kids with fast cars. Too many ghosts and never any haunting. You’re so afraid of becoming a ghost, but you are more afraid of what will happen if you don’t.”
kianamaiart
theartofmadeline
kaledo-art
prguitarman
tangentwithtanner
jbbartram-illu
