what will your verse be?

as I've mentioned before, my music taste is eclectic (to put it politely) and garbage (to put it realistically). so here's an anderperry meet-cute oneshot based on a silly pop punk song that no one asked for (jk. I asked for it).

y'all enjoy!!

the good news is i'm looking at 2 months of down time -- which i plan to use primarily to write more dps stuff ;) see you all very very soon!!

There are strange orange flowers on the side of this highway,

tall and vibrant as they stretch up, up

reaching for the brutal sun in the thick of the Arkansas humidity.

My hand trails out the window –

it almost feels like there’s a breeze going this fast –

and try as I might, 

I can’t remember if I’ve seen these orange flowers before.

I’ve traced my blood back and back and back,

could tell you when and how my ancestors came to this valley and settled into this soil.

My roots run across this state wider than a magnolia tree’s –

my grandfather was born in a dirt floor shack,

my family farmed this land for generations, 

gave it their sweat and their labor and their children,

and I don’t know where the earth begins and my blood ends.

My parents raised me in the Arkansas sunshine

on a farm that I could map out blind,

from the cow graveyard to the blackberry patch where I earned my summer money,

from the shade tree I played under to the fields where my dogs ran.

My sister and I would pick honeysuckle in the early summers –

so much work for so little nectar,

yet it always flowed down our wrists and onto the boards of the front porch in sticky abundance.

My mama would bleach my hair with lemon juice that dripped down into the grass,

always prickly with stickers and gumballs,

but it seemed to soften under my feet.

I came up in the Baptist church,

Sunday morning fire and brimstone melting into Sunday afternoon barbecues,

and it is here that I began to outgrow this place.

my daddy told me to be a good girl,

my mama told me that I should be softer,

and I wanted to scream until my throat was raw that I am a force of nature,

I am a twister of a woman,

with enough anger to split a sycamore straight down the middle

and enough stubbornness to flatten Mount Magazine.

I swear you can see every star in the night sky from my mama’s house;

that black, endless expanse that brought me my first poem

was also the source of my first curiosity.

My daddy bought me a telescope and an atlas of the universe,

and we lay in the backyard for hours, sweaty-limbed and squinting

amidst the toad songs and cicada drones and coyote wails

until we found them one by one:

the big bear and her baby,

the hunter with his bow,

the queen with her mirror.

I can still find them sometimes among the muck of city lights,

but my daddy was always better at it.

I was raised on stories –

the sailors on the Arkansas River who drank ‘til their bellies swelled up like toads,

the girl who disguised herself on a French expedition and followed her love up to the mountains where she took ill and died,

the confederate great-great-great-uncle who carried his dead brother on horseback for three days and three nights to bury him at home.

My daddy fed me Maya Angelou and Johnny Cash;

my mama supplied every book she could find

until I devoured the libraries one by one,

greedy and never satiated,

always searching for more.

My mama brought me up to be a good citizen,

wagged me around to every volunteer day and city council meeting,

made me part of this town no matter how much I kicked and screamed.

My daddy took my sister and I adventuring in the summers –

I’ve probably walked every mile of this state –

and yet I cannot find the love my ancestors had for this place.

I suffocate here like trees under kudzu.

My voice still drips with my mama's accent,

"y'all" sliding off my tongue, g's slipping off my gerunds like sweet tea going down on a hot day,

drawin' sneers from Yankee assholes and teasin' from my friends,

but when their vowels get too clipped and their words too fast I just miss the way my mama talks.

This soil holds everyone I've ever lost.

The cemetery at the head of my mama’s road holds at least three generations of her kin,

back and back and back.

I kneel at my brother’s grave and sob that I will leave his bones here,

in the dirt that I come from,

and each time I visit him will be closer to the last.

But this soil does not yield anything for me anymore –

it hasn’t for a long time –

and as I dig my fingers into the Arkansas earth I wonder which of us has taken more from the other.

I’m sure I’ve been on this highway before,

but it must have been long enough ago that I don’t recognize anything.

It’s the first time I’ve felt lost here in a long time,

amongst these strange orange flowers that I’ve never seen.

I trail my hand out the window, reaching for the brutal sun in the thick of the Arkansas humidity,

and hope that every inch of this place will one day be