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Dreams of the South
Southern dreams become ghosts faster than rednecks become meth addicts. Fascinated by ghosts living in the walls and water, their stories live a life everlasting.
When we leave the South to sit at the right hand of God Almighty, instantly we are shrouded in a mist of Hollywood make-up and flattering light. Never again to be the drunks, dickheads, losers, fuck-ups and fools we were in real life.
We are revered in the rear-view mirror. Names and last days emblazoned in the back window of the pick-up, under the gun rack, in white stick-on plastic letters, telling a story with just an end.
Our thick haze of well-meaning rites to heal grief becomes maudlin intrigue and near-sincere reverence, keeping grief festering under the skin, itching to be told.
It’s a cross on the side of the road where there is no good reason to die; the tattoo of a baby’s face. Pull over, it’s a funeral.
Death is so close to life here, like a thin place between dimensions, no one needs a Long Island Psychic to talk to our dearly departed.
Generations hold hands and repeat lives through the breath of their young. The rhythm can shift, but it doesn’t, like the rusted out Chevy in the yard, it takes too much work to fix it.
It’s just another dream in the South becoming a beloved ghost. It’s all soul, no substance.
It’s another story to tell well.
