The Bayou Never Tells

by Chelley St. Clair

though I’m only sixteen, I don’t feel like a teenage boy. I’m old and hollow...rotted on the inside like a dead tree.

Likes to say we’re all just a bad decision away from finding ourselves in a place we’d never imagine,

I feel like my insides have been scooped out and dumped on the floor, like the discarded flesh of a Halloween pumpkin.

I’ll pretend...even though holding onto him is like cupping water in my hands, watching it drain through my fingers.