The air hangs heavy as a held breath
between the porch swing and the river bend.
Cicadas grind their violins raw.
The sky bruises purple at the wrists.
You find me where the magnolia drops her petals
like folded handkerchiefs
no one will ever claim.
I am barefoot in the red dust,
hem undone,
summer split open at the seam.
You say my name like a warning.
I taste of sweet rot and sugar wine,
of glass bottles left sweating
in the back of a pickup truck
while the heat licks everything clean.
You say I’m trouble.
I say trouble is just a church word for hunger.
There’s a shotgun rusting in the barn.
There’s a hawk circling something smaller than itself.
There’s a hymn still echoing
in the empty throat of Sunday.
Your hand finds my waist
like it’s been hunting me
all season.
The river watches.
The deer freeze.
The crickets bow their heads.
I lean close enough
for you to smell the smoke in my hair—
cedar and gasoline and night-blooming jasmine—
close enough for confession to sweat between us.
You think you’re the hunter.
But I have always known
how to let a man believe that
before I press my mouth to his ear
and tell him
to kneel.
The thunder rolls slow
over the cotton fields.
Lightning etches us gold.
By morning
the magnolia will be stripped bare.
The wine bottle drained.
Your good name dragging behind you
like lace through mud.
And I will be gone—
white dress ghosting down the dirt road,
hawk feather braided in my hair,
summer clinging to my skin
like a promise I never intended to keep.