The Delta gives out little reminders that you are not alone. Nor are you the first person here. Far from it, actually.
You have lost count of how many random gravesites you have found since moving. One practically underwater. Another on the edge of a field. Another outside an abandoned church. Another at a modern church – put all the stones are hand carved and every mark of being made in the nineteenth century.
The first day, with everything you owned in your trunk, you went down a dirt road. It wasn’t like the dirt roads where you grew up, which surprised you. It was just gray and dusty. You found out later that there are red dirt roads here, that the soil here comes in all colors. Mostly it’s a nice deep black, and if the neighbors scared you less you would have asked if your landlord if you could build a garden.
There’s nothing wrong with the neighbors – they’re just college students.
That first day you saw a field of sunflowers for the first time. A field of sunflowers. Just growing. As if they had been waiting for you their whole lives. You told everyone you knew about it.
When your mom visited for the first time, you tried to find the sunflowers again. But it was too late. The sun was settling earlier and earlier, and underneath that peach colored sky, the sunflowers had bowed their heads and gone to sleep.
You struggled to turn around on the dirt road which stressed out everyone in the car.
But the highlight of the trip happened: a skunk! It was small, the size of a cat born wild with fuzzy black and white fur.
Everyone squealed for you to keep driving before it sprayed but its little paws were so small and so cute. You had never seen a live skunk before.
And you haven’t since then.
They should have let you keep looking.
But instead, you drove home and made a makeshift mint julep with dried mint leaves from the Mediterranean store in Jackson.
It’s odd, the things you think you won’t remember – but Aladdin’s Grocery is one of the things you miss the most.
You’ve been craving pine nuts and there’s nothing to do about it. Nothing but wait for the next road trip.
The skunk 🦨! 🤣