Soon

As is it with most long goodbyes, they grew more sentimental as the travel date approached. It didn't help that they were leaving just when the snow was finally gone for good, and the trees were finally undressing into their pretty green skivvies (no more the scratchy white longjohns of Winter!). It didn't help that the few friends they made seemed to glow brighter and warmer in the quickly passing weeks, either. They tried to remember the long drives home, the expensive rent, the tiresome distance from oak trees. Even the willows were different in Alaska; they didn't weep but stood upright and defiant, emotions weren't allowed in a place as tough as this. Oh, Theresa's sure that she's getting way too Tennessee Williams for her own good, and no one is really listening to her lyrical soliloquies anymore. She simply thought too much, and that type of behavior was no good in a place where you always had to be on your guard.

Sort of the thing, but not really.

And she'd had several close calls. Several times when she'd almost lost her way completely and shown her face in a bedroom that wasn't her own. Theresa had a habit of using her God given gifts to get her own dose of attention. Her gifts were curves, knowledge of music and odd German films, curves, and a hint of bisexuality. She knew how to hold men in the crook of her long finger and up here, up here she was tempted to use them for the powers of evil and not good. They had laid dormant for almost a decade, still working, their machinery still whirring but she was oblivious to the results. Men would look at her longer than what's considered proper, old men would burst right out into song. She thought her thighs were huge and her posterior even larger, and not worthy of any sort of attention other than scrutiny.
But here she was sad, and she knew how to make herself happy without the side effects of drugs or alcohol. She shook her powers out like a dusty rag rug and put it back them back on display. They weren't used to southern cleavage up here. No one showed their chest on account of the cold. Down south it's shown because it's hot. The women are hot, too. It's a birth right.

Side note: Good Lord I love Ralph Stanley.

These men and this itch
of chiggers racing across
red clay and white thighs