243 Rivercane Rd
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There used to be trees here where the Walmart now stands, where rust-red clay has been replaced by asphalt. There used to be gravel roads with shells so hot and so sharp they’d cut your feet, and crawfish mounds peppering the low lying ditches. There used to be dandelions and deadnettles and y-shaped weeds we didn’t know the name of. And there was the pond behind the green house where we’d go swimming and pop firecrackers at the first sight of dusk, our hands bathed in gunpowder and watermelon juice. There used to be stars, so many stars and we could remember all of the names of their shapes—Little Dipper, Big Dipper, Orion, Pegasus. There used to be the smell of rain before it fell—sharp and metallic—your mouth open and waiting in the presence of an angry sky. There used to be trailer parks and streetlights with their bulbs blown out and snapping turtles crossing the road and Sunday barbeques under the old oak and Easter egg hunts and lightning bugs and anything and everything but that fucking Walmart.
