I was born on hospital sheets on Jackson Street between two bends in the Brazos. I don’t remember what

I first saw beyond crimson estuary that corralled me into fluorescent gulf. Or how the doctor smacked

her palm against my bare pink ass, rattled my Texas bones into tempestuous wailing. Or father’s flexed face, mother’s

cream thighs, flood of sister’s koi pond pupils—or was it drought? Later, I remember water plunking against windows, running

down windshield like rivers, cresting the banks of the bayou, the way it swallowed me at the ankles,

gagged throat, knocked me directionless in the Pacific—all that power from a single swell. Imagine

you must survive by breathing. I’ve come here from the sea, obsidian depths, beached kelp tangled

on pudendal shore. I know nothing beyond brine in lungs, dead stars stacked into scapula and sacrum.