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