WAY DOWN SOUTH Gretchen Fletcher They sat on sentimental porches with keepsakes of gray paint coming off in chips, mesmerized by a Lethean rain that dripped off the eaves onto crepe myrtle mimosa and camellias, magnolias and all their murmured memories. Their dreams unraveled like woven wicker in humidity, and they fanned away the pesky reminders of sorrows that had fallen on the house of their ancestors whose visages they seemed to see still in the stand of live oaks that wore moss beards as the dogwood out back wore the prints of Love. They were a family upheld by Doric columns, surrounded by balustrades and banisters.

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