Sometimes I like to run naked in the moonlight and the wind, on a little trail behind our house, when the honeysuckle blooms. It's a feeling of freedom, so close to God and nature.
A day so happy. Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden. Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers. There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess. I know no one worth my envying him.
Until I was a teenager, I used red pokeberries for lipstick and a burnt matchstick for eyeliner. I used honeysuckle for perfume.
They lay on their heathery beds and listened to all the sounds of the night. They heard the little grunt of a hedgehog going by. They saw the flicker of bats overhead. They smelt the drifting scent of honeysuckle, and the delicious smell of wild thyme crushed under their bodies. A reed-warbler sang a beautiful little song in the reeds below, and then another answered.
A southern moon is a sodden moon, and sultry. When it swamps the fields and the rustling sandy roads and the sticky honeysuckle hedges in its sweet stagnation, your fight to hold on to reality is like a protestation against a first waft of ether.
Piper leaned toward [Jason], her caramel braid falling over her shoulder. Her multicolored eyes made it hard for him to think straight. “And where is this place?” she asked. “A. . . uh, a town called Split. ” “Split. ” She smelled really good—like blooming honeysuckle. “Um, yeah. ” Jason wondered if Piper was working some sort of Aphrodite magic on him—like maybe every time he mentioned Reyna’s name, she would befuddle him so much he couldn’t think about anything but Piper. He supposed it wasn’t the worst sort of revenge.
Take of London fog 30 parts; malaria 10 parts, gas leaks 20 parts, dewdrops gathered in a brickyard at sunrise 25 parts; odor of honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix. The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville drizzle.
