It is May and the nights blend together like butter and honey or peaches and cream, but not both. Which is to say, nothing is going how I thought it would. This is last June in reverse. The boxes are filling themselves. I am sleeping next to the packing tape. The old hurt is spilling out everywhere. My heart is buzzing again. My heart is a wasp's nest. My heart is a monument to absence. A postcard that says: YOU WERE HERE ONCE, BUT YOU'RE NOT ANYMORE. All of my dreams are about being weightless. Leaving the heaviness outside and praying for rain in Texas. I put my regret into a box and write FREE TO A GOOD HOME on the side of it. I still hope everyone who walks by has the good sense not to pick it up. I am waiting for someone other than myself to call this predictable. To tell me it had to go this way. To say, I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU REALLY EXPECTED.
SEPARATION IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH by Trista Mateer