Lonely Hunters & Tender Heresies: Whispers from My Inner Life

In another life, I live in a sleepy Southern Gothic town—no racists, no debutantes, just heat, quiet, and the scent of old wood and summer rain. I own a little coffee shop that doubles as a bookstore, converted from an old Baptist church tucked behind a leaning fence and a row of wild hydrangeas. The cemetery sits just off in the distance. On breaks, I trace my fingers over the worn epitaphs of crumbling headstones, if only to ward off a sense of inner decay. I sing to the babies and leave flowers for the mothers, even though I know they have long since been swallowed by the earth.

My café is alive. It buzzes and hums like a beehive split open by the sun—voices, laughter, and footsteps melding into an aureate tide. Most days, locals drift in bronzed and barefoot, smelling of tobacco and river water, thumbing through Faulkner or Plath while sipping something dark and sweet. Subversive paintings adorn the walls alongside ’60s protest posters and dark folk concert bills. I hire troubled teens and drifters—mostly foster youth and PTSD-burdened war veterans—for fair wages. I believe everyone deserves second chances. Everything here is pulled from the land itself: sun-bruised peaches, pecans cracked by calloused hands, and honey scavenged from hives nestled in fence-posts behind the shop.

Every morning, I serve eggs, bacon, and hash to the Romeos (Retired Old Men Eating Out), flirting and teasing as I keep their black coffees filled, the conversation always turning provocative. The grill sizzles and purrs while "Kaw-Liga" hums from the record-player, and I gently disturb their hard-earned nostalgia when I tell them I’m not sure there ever truly were any good ol’ days. Behind a false-toothed grin, one of them often pauses mid-sentence—his slow-onset dementia granting him a fleeting, fragile moment of grace—to tell me I remind him of the moody, wild-hearted girl from his youth who somehow slipped away. I see him tracing the memory of her lips curling mid-conversation, desperately trying to hold it before it disappears into the ether, and for a brief, aching moment, I wish I could actually be her, if only to soothe that unspoken longing.

Unsurprisingly, copies of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter are always in demand. But I slip in revolutionary texts where I can. Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread, de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto, and Foucault’s Discipline and Punish are nestled between Baldwin and Morrison, waiting for curious hands to discover them.

The floorboards murmur old secrets and tender heresies—something about the curse of dogma and the lie of prayers. Light gleams through the tall, warped-paned windows like molten honey across the spines of books. In the evenings, the locals fill the pews for coffee and conversation, while poets, folk singers, and local activists take the pulpit. We snap our fingers, clap our hands, raise our fists, laugh, and cry. Informal town 'meetings' brimming with soul and warm drink. My heart fills when I watch the lonely widows and widowers pair off and go home with one another, alchemizing their quiet grief into tentative, trembling companionship.

I live in a haunted Victorian at the edge of town, with a wrap-around porch where I like to write and paint. It's my sanctuary. Here, I am calm, and the spirits always welcome me. My anger doesn't live out loud; it only spills onto the page and canvas. Wisteria climbs the porch, overgrown and feral in all its purple glory. For whatever reason, I don't try to tame it; it feels wrong somehow. Behind the house, a private lake waits, glassy and still. Some days I go fishing for my supper; other days, I sunbathe in the nude on the dock, eating cherries from the trees until my mouth is red and vicious.

At night, I keep my blinds open, casually inviting the neighbours to glimpse my naked body, not for shock, but for the pleasure of being seen, offering up skin like a sacrament. On warm nights, I sip caramel-flavoured whiskey by the lake and watch the moon reach across the water like a luminous silver hand. Most of the time, I go to bed alone. I have never found anyone who could hold all of me. When the rain comes, I sit fireside and bury myself in historic love letters unearthed from a dusty basement chest—each one trembling with the restraint and ache of impossible love—and I drink and weep, remembering how that same disenfranchised longing etched itself into my bones so many years ago. On certain nights, when the wind rattles the house beyond my comfort, I let the men in, their wants draped around me like silk hung on the line. When morning comes, I let them go. No sins to repent, no choices to burden myself with. I have already committed to mine.

I understand my need for aloneness. They do too. And nobody tries to alter it.

Not even the ghosts that live alongside me.