deliberately, enveloped in rust and shade, its skin the color of bruises.

I cannot shake off the grip of my cousin's hand to run. She is frozen, motionlessly gazing. She will not move.



Tell me it's trite, and I'll tell you otherwise.

I'm high on Dramamine with my best friend, driving my first car toward Abilene. We started in Virginia after my sister had been found naked and deceased on her dorm room floor. It is June now, and I am happy. I have not slept in three days and we are only in Georgia on some two-lane slicing past cadavers of houses caved in with kudzu, buzzing through the drone and prick of mosquitoes. The windshield glass before us is opaque and sweating and streaked in insect parts. We wear the humidity like a wet, wool veil. I have not slept in three days, and I am happy, and I do not give one shit where we end up.



Smithfield Ham

I could see the asparagus silhouettes of cottonwoods on either side of the automobile, blurring together, punctuating the distance traveled like mile markers. The silvery road tunnels through the trees, barely illuminated by the full moon. The motorcar takes a sudden left, rumbling upwards on a twisting dusty path. A tall grey warehouse to the side of the path blocks the luminescent moon.

I hit the dashboard as my body lurches forward, seized by the stolen momentum of a sudden and precise stop. I open the door and step onto the mossy grass as my eyes adjust to this darkness. Moisture visibly seeps from the warm earth in wispy tendrils of fog and a low, shrill but indistinguishable din can be heard, slowly building in audibility until all at once it is translated in the deepest recesses of my being. Something living being turned into something dead.






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