And once again, again again, I do not know how to tell my love of a southern state from my love of a southern man. But here at least he does not want me, does not invite me with honeysuckle and whiskey and wife-wording, to muddle my thoughts with entangled desires. How strange, to think of that other life, in which the Cumberland River runs in my veins, valentines stitched across my chest.

Because the day that I head south–and I do know, the long winters have etched the story in my bones, rubbed clear with the charcoal of warm nights, that day will come–it has to be for me, for me, and not for one of these pairs of eyes that slays me. 

Again again again my heart is a peach splitting through its sides, but at least now I have the memories to justify the fire. It’s gonna be alright, it’s gonna be alright, the day you get married I’ll drink ‘til I’m blind and I’ll tear off all my skin and dance bleeding on the lawn, punch someone’s second cousin, scream myself hoarse with half-remembered songs, but it’s gonna be alright it’s gonna be alright, because when we both die I will have known you, and maybe nothing matters but that matters to me.