After I got the Gothic and violence out of my system, I transitioned to the opposite side of the spectrum. I wanted to write about things that were happier, that weren't so fast-paced and aggressive, so my writing started to take on a more rural feel, drawing on elements of Midwestern farm culture as well as Southern culture. 

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However there's a little bit more of a backstory to my morphing persona. Beginning last year, I started to explore Southern culture, writing Sunday Night Lights, which is now in the magazine, centered around a drive (I recently read my reflection for this piece from last year's portfolio, and I find it so funny and interesting how one year can change a person). At this point in the school year, Emma and I had begun driving around some of the back roads in Matthews and South Park, not too far but encompassing a radius of a few miles around both our houses. We often went to Target to get pints of ice cream before doing this, and the chosen playlist was her favorite country songs, usually just whatever was on the radio. This became a ritual, almost every week until eventually it became at least a bi-weekly occurrence. Eventually we had to stop buying ice cream every time we went. 

 

Going into this year, we started driving south and east instead of going through South Park, venturing into Weddington until Weddington became Waxhaw then Mineral Springs then sometimes South Carolina. We sought out roads that were winding and a bit older and the opposite direction anyone else was going. The neighborhoods we saw became farms and fields. We saw more horses than we saw people. 

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As cliche as it is, I started to change too with every new back road we went down. I found a love for openness, country music, and roads with no lights. I found myself doing the kind of things I'd daydreamed back in middle school when I so desperately wanted to live in the south. The movies I mentioned last year that had "lied" to me now held a kind of truth. For the sake of more cliches, it felt like I'd found me again, like I'd been sort of dormant since I'd moved and even more lost since this last fall. I was finally comfortable, and every stress melted away (except for the gas money stress---that is very real, even though I block it out a lot of the time). 

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The piece I wrote for Natalie's prompt was entirely inspired by the drives Emma and I take, though they've been modified a bit to include a different character than Emma, one I can't entirely explain at this point in time:

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Drive: Version 1 

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On Friday nights after school, you pick me up in your Chevy

with the windows rolled down and the country station cranked all the way up.

Your vinegar voice, crisp and out of tune like the six-now-five string guitar sitting in your room,

rises above the honey pouring from the speakers. You don’t even pause to say hello

when I find cracked leather beneath me and the metal edge of a seatbelt.

 

The minutes it takes to get away from the neighborhoods

and the super markets and the traffic

seem like hours.

But when your tires finally break away from fresh paved roads,

and there isn’t another car we can see, I can breathe.

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Up until the first draft of this piece, I thought I was doing pretty good on the showing, not telling thing, but the last line of the first stanza really tanked that. I guess it's not too bad, with the seat belt and seat description, but from that point on, the piece sort of dissolves into less specific, more telling language. Plus it felt off; it didn't have the kind of emotion I was looking for, that cliche, high school love emotion. I wanted a relationship, a solid relationship, in this piece, so I decided to scratch the last stanza. 

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When I rewrote the piece this next time, I added more specifics than I had before and another stanza, which I think helped solidify the tone of the piece and make it a little more immersive. Some of the details still need some work; they feel a little unintentional in places like the last line of the second stanza, but I think the concept and image is there. I think here is where I found my way back to the root of my writing: the love poem, as well as the root of who I actually am, a girl very found of the country. 

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Drive: Version 2 

 

On warm Friday nights after school, you pick me up in your Chevy

with the windows rolled down and 103.7 cranked all the way up.

Your vinegar voice, crisp and out of tune like the six-now-five string guitar hanging in your room,

rises in rickety melodies above the honey pouring from the speakers. You can’t pause to say hello

when I click the metal seat belt in because you might as well be damned

if you miss a lyric. The verses bubble out of me in laughter beside you.

 

Neighborhoods and supermarkets and the many cars

fade out into fields of purple wildflowers and tobacco,

and fresh, straight, four-laned pavement turns into two pot-holed lanes

worn through by tractors. You take the turns a little too fast,

so the horses look up from their grazing when they hear me squeal,

grasping for your hand resting on the middle seat.

The smell of hay wraps around my hair and saturates our clothes.

 

When the headlights come on, you drive a little slower over the railroad tracks

and cross the state line back home, tracing maps over my thigh

until my driveway lights up before us.

I linger like country melodies on the radio until you kiss me goodnight,

telling me the roads will still be there next week and all the fields too.