satire

Dearest Mother, the Target Still Stands: Letters From the South Durham Hellscape

How are we surviving the South Durham hellscape? Ten fictional neighbors send Civil War-style dispatches from the carpool line, the goose-occupied pond, and a Target run gone terribly over budget. Send pastries.

Wes Platt

Wes Platt

— 6 min read
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Dearest Mother, the Target Still Stands: Letters From the South Durham Hellscape
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Southpoint AccessWes Platt

Satire: These letters and their authors are fictional.

Someone fetch the stationery. South Durham must get word to the outside world.

If we’re going to imagine our corner of North Carolina as the hellscape of Donald Trump’s nightmares, we ought to document the suffering properly. In virtual ink. With extravagant declarations of devotion. Preferably accompanied by a mournful fiddle.

Across our embattled neighborhoods, residents press on. They brave Fayetteville Road. They negotiate supper with small children. They enter Target believing, against all available evidence, that they'll purchase only toothpaste.

Collected here are 10 dispatches from that home front. Read them slowly, with the gravity owed to people who have been in the carpool line since 2:17.

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