Tag Archives: unsaid words

Riding with the Dead ©️

Posted on by
Reply

It was sometime around supper, the Alabama sun finally bleeding out over the pines, painting the road in that syrupy, honeyed kind of light that makes you forget just how mean the world can be. We were riding in that beat-up side-by-side behind the cotton fields, wheels kicking up dust like red ghosts in the rearview.

She sat up front with her husband, her hair pinned neat like Sunday morning, even if it was only Friday. He was a Yankee—God help him—all tight shoulders and Indiana jaw, gripping the wheel like it might betray him. He didn’t fit in the seat or the silence. Didn’t know how to let the heat speak. His shirt was too clean, his mouth too closed, and Lord, did he drive like a man waiting to be punished.

She didn’t say much. Just looked out toward the tree line, where the light makes things look farther away than they are. She wasn’t angry. No, it was something quieter than that. Like maybe she’d made peace with something awful, or maybe she’d just grown too tired to pick the fight.

Their boy was in the middle, covered in dust and grinning like a possum. Laughing, wild, free. He didn’t know about inheritance yet. Didn’t know blood could bend time. He just liked the speed and the wind and being between them.

I sat in the back, out of the way, watching like I always do. I wasn’t there for the ride. I was there for the reveal.

And sure enough, it came.

I blinked. Just once. Nothing dramatic.

And when I opened my eyes, it wasn’t her and that Yankee at all. It was my paternal grandparents. My grandfather with his thundercloud eyes and rough hands, and my grandmother, stiff and sugar-laced, the kind of woman who could apologize and wound you in the same breath. They were sitting there, plain as day, but wearing different skin.

It was the way he held the wheel—like he wanted to win at driving. And the way she turned her head slightly away, not out of fear but survival. I saw it all—the old fights, the unsaid things, the long silences filled with obligation. I saw the dirt that never left the bloodline.

And that Yankee—poor fool—he didn’t even know he was wearing a ghost.

Because that’s the trick in the South: we don’t pass down heirlooms. We pass down wounds. And they ride with us, talk through us, love through us. Even when the voice has a northern accent and no idea what it’s inherited.

I sat there, just breathing, just listening to the wheels grind over the land my people never left. And I thought—Lord, she married a Yankee. But the curse? The curse stayed Southern.

Low-Heat, Slow-Burn ©️

Posted on by
Reply

The room is thick with something you can’t name. A lazy ceiling fan moves in slow, uneven circles, stirring the warmth but not cooling it. The scent of something foreign lingers—spiced, unfamiliar, maybe perfume, maybe smoke, maybe both. A record spins somewhere in the background, crackling like it’s been played too many times but still hasn’t lost its charm. And then there’s her.

She sits across from you, draped, loose-limbed, unconcerned. A leg crossed over the other, her heel tapping against the air to the rhythm of a song neither of you are really listening to. Her glass of whiskey is half-empty. Yours is untouched. It’s always like this. The dance before the fall.

TEMPTATION (smiling slow, head tilted, watching you through heavy lids, fingers lazily trailing the edge of her glass)

“You’re always so tense when you look at me. Makes me wonder what you’re thinking.”

YOU (exhaling, shifting in your seat, studying the way she moves, the way she doesn’t have to try—she just exists and the room bends around her)

“I’m thinking about leaving.”

TEMPTATION (laughs, low and effortless, like smoke curling in the air, like she already knows the ending to this story)

“You always think about leaving. And yet.”

YOU (eyes flicker to the door, then back to her, pulse slow but deep, the rhythm off just enough to be dangerous)

“And yet.”

TEMPTATION (leans forward, elbows on the table, her skin catching the light, a glint of something gold at her wrist, maybe a bracelet, maybe a handcuff, maybe something else entirely)

“Tell me, why do you come back if all you want is to walk away?”

YOU (rolling the unspoken answer across your tongue like a cigarette unlit, something dangerous, something waiting to burn)

“Maybe I just like testing myself.”

TEMPTATION (smiles like she’s heard it before, like she’s tasted every version of that excuse and found them all sweet, but not quite satisfying)

“Oh, honey. That’s not it.”

YOU (inhales slow, watching her watching you, waiting for her to tell you what she already knows, because she always does, and you always let her.)

TEMPTATION (leans back, stretching like a cat that’s full but still wants to hunt, voice lazy, like a song dripping through the speakers at half-speed.)

“You come back because you like the way it feels. The chase. The almost. The maybe. You like the way I make you forget that you were ever sure about anything.”

YOU (clenching your jaw, but not hard enough to crack, just enough to feel it, just enough to know that she’s right.)

“And what if I want to remember?”

TEMPTATION (a pause, then a smirk, then a slow, slow shake of her head.)

“That’s cute.”

YOU (laughs under your breath, shaking your head too, but for different reasons.)

“You think I’ll give in first.”

TEMPTATION (shrugs, one shoulder slipping bare, but she doesn’t fix it, doesn’t care, doesn’t need to.)

“I don’t think, baby. I know.”

YOU (reaches for the whiskey, finally, because your hands need something to do, because her eyes are waiting, because she’s already made her move, and now it’s yours.)

“What if this time, you’re wrong?”

TEMPTATION (leans forward again, elbows back on the table, hands folded, her chin resting lightly on them, lazy, knowing, devastating.)

“Then I guess we’ll both have a new story to tell.”

The fan hums. The record crackles. The whiskey burns. She is still watching, and you are still here.

And yet.