(Bogalusa, 2004)
There was a stillness to Bogalusa that didn't feel holy, the kind that settled like mold in the bones, that pressed down on skin like a slow rot. It was a town built on smoke and sawdust, where the pine mill coughed all day and the churches whispered all night, and nothing changed but the seasons and the faces buried in the red clay.
Men sat in front of the feed store from sunup to dusk, speaking in quiet threats and spit. The women walked fast, eyes down, hands grippi