Alabama

In January of 1983, a figure was carved out of muddled red clay on the banks of the Coosa River. For the next several months, through the relentless heat of the Alabama summer, the small sculpture baked in a kiln disguised as a womb, until, finally, it emerged in October, a girl. Her bones are made of Alabama Clay, the river's remnants are still flowing in her veins. If you look closely, at her hips, her wrists, her collar bones, you can just make out the sides and tips of weathered Creek arrowheads. Her brown eyes are dark, cool caves where catfish rest in the summer; her unruly hair, a cotton field, dancing in the breeze.

I've wasted 24 years pretending I could escape the South, that I could belong somewhere else, but with each loss, every death, my bones howl, and my heart breaks, for home.