Vachon Imagined

She stood on the side of the road, waiting for the perfect ride. A suitcase tied to her hand like a weeping willow, dripping sadness into the desert of separation. It weighed her down, waiting for the perfect time.

As time withered from dawn to dusk, from shadow into memory, she remained there while every knight in shining armor passed—his dashing smile, his hurried promises—offering her a ride toward destiny, toward fame. But she could see the end of that road inside every grin, the faint collapse behind each promise, the shape of a dream she herself had been clinging to, suitcase growing heavier in her grip.

The desert became too saturated with heat to endure. So instead of waiting, she walked her own path down a hot and steaming road, one that, when rain returned, would release the familiar scent of South Carolina summers—fireflies landing on her skin like questions she never needed to answer.

She remembered mason jars her grandmother once left for tomorrow, now filled with sunlight, with butterflies. She claimed them as her own as the suitcase loosened, as if it had been waiting for permission to vanish.

And so it did.

It dissolved into the heat before it could ask her to hold it any longer.

And she kept walking.