“Outlaw Country,” an excerpt from my novel, None So Distant, published in Spare Parts Literary Magazine as part of their From the Desk series:
Reports of fringy lore on lost highways. Point-counterpoint in a twangy battle of wills. Stay tuned.
I am not going anywhere. There is nowhere to go. Someone took a picture of me, once, whenever, just like this—A girl standing on the highway, packed suitcase, waiting, hoping, or, not waiting, not hoping … pictures lie in ten thousand different ways.
In that scene, I will always be there, here, the side of the highway, and every person that lays eyes on me will superimpose a story, I am imagination’s text and frozen asset, I am the photo that makes you want to believe in eternity as an irregular verb.
I am not going anywhere, yet if you are not going anywhere eternally, is that the trip? Is that the action? The motion? The odyssey? Eternity, even as an irregular verb, is subject to context.
