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A bag of clothes, a box of books, another smaller box of letters and photographs & an old guitar are sitting in the backseat.


It's 3am and she's driving through the Blue Ridge mountains. All the windows are down, warm summer air billows in and sends her hair dancing. 


She doesn't know where she's going, but the warmth calls to something in her blood so she heads South. 


She'll probably end up on a beach somewhere in a little East Coast town. Maybe she'll sell flowers and jam by the roadside or find a little bookstore that needs help, she'd wash floors all day if she had to and wouldn't think to complain. 


It all feels like freedom. 


The air smells like rosemary and thyme that grow wild along the roads. The stars are so bright she can hear them breathing. A jackalope dashes across her headlights & is gone before she has time to turn her head.


She parks in the back corner of a gas station somewhere in the Carolinas & stretches her legs out the window, takes a few sips of whiskey and reads a while before she falls asleep. Lightning bugs dance in a nearby field to the voices of cicadas. 


Somewhere a voice is screaming, glass is breaking, sirens pierce the stillness of a quiet street, but she doesn't hear it & she never will again. Even in sleep she is smiling.