Here is the intro to a short story I've been working on called Butler, Missouri.
On the porch in Missouri, made with wood so rough and busted, it would cut you and stab splinters into. Past the porch door with bugs caught and dead in its screen, turning off the last crooked step and into grass that hasn’t been cut for months, growing weeds, dandy lions, and twisted-tall bunches of grass, bending over the curb and into the street. The sky was a faint blue, caught after dawn and just starting to break. It wasn’t freezing, only just cold. Feckless. Clouds were few, say a couple that are placed around the sky and don’t interact into a shape or form. Off distance, the sounds of car horns blared and their tires crunched into the grooves of the red bricks; red bricks cemented into the ground as the town’s square. A square that had been dying but was something the entire town of Butler, Missouri, ignored.
That is all. CST 07/9/25