Southern Death

It's too bright here.

The south, I mean. 

The white-washed walls and the faded red roofs and the crunchy pale grass- they all start to blur together, after a while, mixing with the stark white of the clouds, until it seems like the entire scene was doused in bleach. 

It's too white, too faded and dull- the roar of the cicadas a constant thrum in the back of your mind, the kind of noise that you hear echoing through the house as you stare up at the ceiling and try to will yourself asleep. 

It's hot here, too- despite the fact it's August and, y'know, Fall should be kicking in right about now. You walk outside and you're drenched, cheeks flushed and breath a harsh pant and your knees stick to the backs of your thighs when you crouch down onto the grass. When you walk barefoot along the hot asphalt, it burns your feet if you stay still for too long. 

So you run. 

You run until the sweat-soaked locks of your hair go flying out behind you, until your shirt ripples in the non-existent breeze of the dry air, until the soles of your heels are stained and callused and burnt and you feel the oddest sense of satisfaction later - when you're in your house and the air conditioning is turning the sweat on the back of your neck into a chilled sheen - you feel pleased when you trace your fingers along the thick, burnt-brown skin of your feet, and you smile. 

It's hot and dry and lazy and after a while all of the gas stations and strip malls and Wal-Marts turn into a continuous line until you have no clue what intersection you're at anymore; they're all the same damn thing anyways. You could loose yourself here, amongst the Spanish moss and tanning oil and the condensation that drips down bottles of Diet Coke. 

It's so easy. 

Just drive and drive and drive until you're at the very top, until the state lines blur and you're 3 states away but it still looks the same. There's a 7-11, a Waffle House, a Publix. 

It all looks exactly the goddamn same. 

And it could kill a person. It could, I swear. The bleached asphalt mazes and the gas stations and the palmettos could become the sort of prison that winds itself slowly around you, the kind of death that is long and subtle and sickly-sweet until one day, your last day, you look around and realize what's happened. 

You could die here, could sink down underneath the palms and just wait until your eyes go unfocused, and the little brown anoles come to perch on your waxy calves, to sunbathe on top of your unmoving lips. 

But maybe that'd be for the best. Maybe I should wait for the tendrils of Southern death to come curling around me, maybe that's better. 

After all, it's too bright here.