if i close my eyes it can be right there, asphyxiation and honeysuckle, that deep southern honeysuckle that swarms and swaths, dabs at your ribs and slathers your eyelids, that sweet sticky swarming honeysuckle. she was not a southern gil though, she was not even eastern, she had rivers flowing through her veins. still she was a shapeshifter; she could mold. and the heat was very swollen, her brain expanded miles across that southern land. the whole time breathing the air and knowing it wasn’t hers to take, it belonged to gophers and boys made of straw. she felt from her toes up. static fibers in the tall grasses, a sense of falling rattling her empty stomach. sounds took on a metallic quality, everything like it was covered with a tin can. she needed more stairs, golden light making things distant. her brain kept reeling the same track, the film catching on fire and looping back trailing charcoal and ash. she saw him as a shell around her. and all the time suckling that honey.

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