Desiree Evans is a writer from Louisiana. Her writing has received support from the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA), the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Kimbilio Fiction, and the Hurston/Wright Foundation. She is currently an MFA Fiction Fellow at the Michener Center for Writers at The University of Texas at Austin, where she is at work on her first novel and short-story collection. Follow her on twitter @desireevans. “The Last Leaving” is part of a cross-genre multimedia series Desiree’s working on exploring the impact of climate change on marginalized communities along the Gulf Coast, with support from the CultureStrike Climate and Environmental Justice Literary Fellowship.

HERE/YOU ARE

The Last Leaving

By DESIREE EVANS

Before the leaving, there is the staying, there are the days of in-betweens, sheltered in the arms of our mother’s mothers.

The tenor of days spent on land that is more water than ground, more magic than science. How during late evenings, in the dying light, our breaths crackle like thunder, and our history moves in everything.

Home would no longer be a place where the leaves would bend to the sound of our names, but somewhere that would come to know our silences.

There is no place we will go that will not know of where we’ve been. There is no place we will go that will not know our songs.