Hollow
by Audrey Walls
These woods are ugly. Don鈥檛 bother pretending they hold significance other than blood. Each misstep, a rattler snuck into my bones. Even the wind hisses us home. The roads dissolve into gravel & clay where we scraped dead rabbits from embankments, their pinkish bodies still warm with rot & flies. Now, each fence rusts red against our open wounds. I turn my back on the dark, the smell of cut roots. I ask if he鈥檇 ever live here again. He shrugs. You can鈥檛 take the country out of the girl. I tell him to be honest. It was years ago & you could hardly call it living.