It’s easy to forget what your granny said, so far up in the foothills.
Plucking wineberries, small hairs stabbing into fingertips.
Cheeks pinched with cold. Clearings, pockets for an overactive imagination.
In the time it takes you to cross the river, you are no longer a child.
Unburdened, unbridled, and unbroken.
All terrain can be a mountain if you’re small enough—
If your capacity for pretending is stronger than your tiring lungs.
A small swath of light reads of endless time.
And if you stick out your thumb, home looks so very close.
Oh, how infallible you are, just a quarter past six.
The trail you take is a tired riddle, rife with misdirection.
You walk it with the confidence of a man who’s practiced the answer: lips pursed, eager.
The woods are clever. But they can’t light a candle to your cunning.
The tangible doesn’t consume the mind like stories do.
So you pass through the illuminated thickets that claw at your bundled frame.
Exceptions to nature made, exceptions to nature kept.
So you believe, until unfamiliarity creeps into your peripheral.
Abandoned barns. Lonesome picket fences. Apples and persimmons rot at your feet.
And with them your chances do too.
The end of the line is here.
And home is not.
The schoolyard warnings aren’t so distant a quarter past seven.
Oh, how you’ve strayed, gone ways away.
Somewhere even the deer won’t follow.
Retrace a left and then another. The chirps of crickets fade—
It’s darker than it ought to be. Your watch face hangs on to afternoon vices.
Drowned in darkened silence.
It’s close, white eyes and a far off keening your only beacons.
No one likes a wolf. Nor does anyone like an uglier thing disguised as one.
There’s not a prayer that can save you.
A quarter past dusk.
Georgia Hope writes queer fantasy with a southern gothic twist and essays that break down the turbulent relationship between adolescence and academia. Currently a high school senior in the state of Texas, her idea of a good time is exploring haunted small towns with a notebook, camera, and a large cup of iced coffee. When she’s not making her readers cry you can find her gathering more bizarre lore for her next story or having an existential crisis on her Instagram page @georgiainabook.
Featured image by Luca Bravo on Unsplash.
