We found what was left of the golden retriever shrouded in tall weeds along a vacant stretch of road. He had a length of chain and a padlock where a collar and tags should've been, and the skin beneath it had worn away the fastest. That we didn't know his name stuck with me that night worse than the sight of the larvae sustaining themselves on his stench. We pulled up fistfulls of clover and dandilions and said a prayer as we covered his matted fur. But we left a clear place around his nose.…

In the summer it gets the kind of hot you can smell: things melting and burning and dying in such unrelenting light. But that sun still don't shine as bright as Preacher Ford's eyes when he looks up every time I come in to Sunday morning worship. I get the impression he likes the effect the heat of summer has on his believers: strappy dresses, thin fabric, and hems short enough to let the box fans blow a limping breeze across my thighs. That's the part of me he likes most, I can tell.…

Maizy always knew that one day it would come to this.  He kicks that door down and he done brought on hisself, she reassured herself as she nervously pecked at her scalp, drawn tight and itchy under the strain of cheap rollers. And then there it was again, the boom boom of his fist on the other side of the door, the clang of his workboot meeting the wood when his hands bore no result. "Imma kill that man for snatching you up!" he hollered as the door began to splinter. She cinched…

A lone hawk watched me walk down the street, perched at the top of a bare tree, and I knew that death would touch me. It was a sinking feeling, my guts sliding into my shoes an organ at a time. I tried to ignore him, but he wouldn't ignore me, uninterested in the field mice that skittered through the tall grass that grew unchecked on the vacant lots where houses were once imagined. "Who are you here for?" I whispered as I thought back to every last conversation, instantly checking off those…