Devouring Mother; From

A couple mornings gone by and I found a letter on my bed several pages long. Written in pen, words scratched through, unrefined. I took it up to the decks and sat in a breezy spot while I read what S had written about our From.

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People often think I'm jokin' when I say this, but had we stayed in Louisiana Sky'd be dead already.

I can find the humor and absurdity in that statement with a bit more ease now that we're where we are today, but there was a time when that knowin was an eerie prophecy I was walking toward. Would've died by suicide, or sickness, or if not by those, then at least on the inside.

Sometimes when people hear that, they think I must hate Louisiana but that ain't what's true either. When you seen somethin for what it truly is and you know what's been done to it to make it that way, then words like hate, or even love, just become obsolete.

My Louisiana is a sleepy boiling beast of a woman. She is reptilian and noisy. Manic, yet still; so still you wouldn't even know she's huntin you, but such is the way of great predators. Her love is like her climate; humid, oozy, and suffocating. And her most defining quality is the way she devours everything. She is the entity that raised me and was my first understanding of 'mother' in this life.

She has a very sultry way of sedating the soul before devouring it. There is a reason the southern drawl is most like the voice of singing, for we have many songs to make you wanna stay a while. And in your staying, you might start to hear some lullabies, too, which are often haunting if you really listen to what they're sayin'. Don't matter though, you still fall asleep to ‘em.

My relationship with Louisiana is precious to me in the way that running from something is the same action that eventually stirs you to yearn for something else. I am terrified of her, everyone should be, and I think the only love good enough for all she is would have to be that of a God's. I feel very fondly for her, even proud when I get to say she's where I come from. And I never miss her.

I believe Louisiana and I learned to accept one another in a very similar way; Out of curiosity, hesitantly, and a little grossed out.

It happened when I was young because I was so dazzled by her green. There are so many places in this world where the green of spring and summer is praised, revered. But never have I seen another place whose green sobs like Louisiana's does. Her sobbing saturates everything, and the color that comes outta that still leaves me awestruck. Do you know that line in Florence + the Machine's South London Forever where she sings, "And I don't know anything, except that green is so green, and there's a special kind of sadness that seems to come with spring."

I heard that and thought, "Maybe Florence has seen Louisiana cryin, too."

Or you know anything about citrus trees? When they suspect their death might be imminent they'll over produce their fruit in unbridled brilliance as a last ditch effort to announce their existence. They do this in hopes that someone might finally notice and take care. These trees silently scream out, "Please, I am here! Acknowledge me, I exist!" And then all of a sudden the pollinators come to fertilize, clouds come to offer their rain, and humans gather round to adore a superbloom. Most of these citrus trees recover from all the tending that comes from their death cry.

But Louisiana's green cries and screams and begs to be noticed, to be helped, to be loved and well-tended, and no one ever comes for her. Even me, I heard her cryin, and I ran off when she finally let me.

People down south are similar, too. So stressed out and overproducing, ignoring each others cries, opting instead to just harp on reproduction. I used to think that all people ever talked about was babies cuz they were bored, but now I see it to be such a primitive thing. Fearin for their lives, so they continue their lines.

I remember the day when I confronted Louisiana for the first time, bout all her noise. I was young and the green of the algae in the bayou I was squatting next to was trying to entrance me, and I wanted it to, but I couldn't fucking get over how loud Louisiana was. She didn't know I could hear everything, against my own wants, and she was wailing something awful. You can even hear the sound of light in Louisiana. A day that's afraid to fade away is a devastating sound. The sounds of Louisiana are all afraid of themselves.

So on this day, I finally screamed back just to say, "Quit yellin! I can't stand it!" I made myself as loud as her as my eyes were welling up. "I can hear you! And I do, in fact, adore your beauty, I just can't do anything to help you! I'm dying, screaming, crying, too!"

Out of breath, I said to her and maybe to myself, "You're too beautiful to be begging this way."

The acceptance we found for one another mighta been more like the kind you reluctantly grow into when you begin to see your reflection clearly. One desperate muzzled superbloom staring down another.

Since that day she attempted to love me best she knew how, and granted me grace that she does not often or freely give. This consideration did not completely nix her devouring tendencies, but her method of sedation for me was slightly different from her usual prescription. Normally she drugs people til that sleepiness makes them idle and unable to leave. Their insignificance clings to them, and they cling back to her. Its a strange thing to want to keep people around who do not, and cannot, care for you, because of what you do to them, because of what they've done to you.

I s'pose she decided that for me to have my best shot at life, she'd have to let me go in time, so she drugged me with intent to let me wake someday. I did not dream under her haze and I assumed I'd die before she ever let me go, so this gamble was one I didn't have the will to care much about at the time.

I lived my adolescence in a living sleep and I grew into a wretched young lady who was real good at winning things she didn't care about as my youth passed me by. I don't have a real clear remembrance of who I was back then, because of Louisiana's anesthetic, and I didn't wake up from that living sleep til I was about 16, due to falling in love. My mom will tell you that I was mean and miserable, and I wanted to take from this world. My dad will say I was an honored first-born who was wise and wished to give to this world. I'm not sure what my brothers would say about me back then, but I always wish I could go back and love them better when we had so much time to be near each other.

But let an aching heart be the thing to wake us up, huh? I started falling in love with many things after that, maybe I even fell in love with Louisiana a little bit, too. But my waking was an accident in her timeline and she couldn't let me go just yet, so she put me back to sleep in a different way.

While love can be a great catalyst, it can also be a great hindrance. The stagnation of love would've threatened me leaving, and maybe it did prolong my staying, but Louisiana remedied this by poisoning me with her sugarcane on drip. Little by little into my bloodstream, so that this sleep was restless and ridden with jitters. It was not pleasant, but it was her gift to me-

To give me dreams fitful enough to itch. To itch for leavin, and other things I did not have the words to describe yet.

When it was time to let me go, she woke me starkly, through heartbreak. Let an aching heart be the thing to wake us up again, huh?

She did not bother to acknowledge the sore, sopping wet wings I'd managed to grow throughout all those unconscious years under her sleep, nor did she linger in the doorway to watch me make my leave. I s'pose all the itchin wasn't solely from sugar-spiked blood, but too, from these new limbs growing out my back.

When I go back to visit Louisiana now, I can sometimes feel her staring at these wings, wondering if they're carryin me well. She still does not take credit for them, but they are modeled after the creatures of her land who are old enough to be found in fossils. Sometimes they take the iridescence of a damselfly, and other times I can feel the amorphous transition between feather and scales in my own body's indecision on how its ancestors musta looked. I think these beasts are the ones Louisiana must miss; the ones who love her better than we do.

It has taken me many years to make the muscles of these wings strong enough to do anything truly significant with them. I'm still not as strong of a flier as I'd like to be, but I am getting closer I know.

To Louisiana, where I was once her odd daughter, I am now just a heart-achy guest. And though she always leaves a place for me, I can feel her disapproval when I pop in for visits. I can hear her say to me, "Why have you come back again? You have wings." She means to be menacing but I can hear the worry. The fear that every time I come back I might not make it out again, because everything in Louisiana- every one, every animal, insect, even plants, are all waiting to take a bite outta you. All life in Louisiana hums in anticipation to see who'll have the first bite; them or you. Sometimes you think a bite's coming and turns out it’s just a sticky lick, things desiring a lil taste of you. And sometimes a southern smile looks like the baring of teeth.

It all just depends on the heat really, though its always getting hotter.

I still don't think love or hate are relevant words when it comes to my feelings for our From, but everything I feel for her is natural and without shame.

Keep your promise.