Time beats slow in Kentucky

I see her sitting at a pit stop in Kentucky. Her boots up, her wild whiskey grin. Laughing at the lot of us still trapped in this melancholy hell.

“I reckon you all have chills when I step up on you.”

Let me sink here in your tatted skin. “I’m not earthbound, anymore.”

Laughing at our bloodshot lives and wasted plans.

“I’m still here, somehow.”

Let my heart bleed out onto the kitchen floor

remembering her will

the pain of it.

”can you hear me?”

Her hopeless light of marigold

Her stubborn fight against the dying of the light.

”I’m with you, can you see me?”

Her death blowing a hole

straight through the universe

and shattering the moon.

”I love you all, I’m still here.”

We are stolen by her

memory

Our beloved

Shells

Her ghost forever

lives within those

of us who felt the

certain and sudden

drop

from

heaven

as her spirit

hit the sky

Rest now.

Shelley “Shells” Gilreath

May 18th 1981 - April 18th 2025