Spears of sunlight shine Through the gaping window,  Ushering in a soft breeze.  Birds dot the face of the sky,  Shifting, flapping freckles  That highlight the cloudy blush.  Trees reach their verdant arms up  Until they nearly graze the world’s ceiling As they celebrate merrily,  Casting down clusters of green confetti. S mall gusts of…

I dream in vibrant screaming color then remember too much I wake up in the back seat of a car driving on its own Something chases me my legs freeze up I cannot outrun the thing behind me that looks just like my dad Somehow I drown in deep water when I know how to…

I believe I will be the first in a long line of eldest daughters not to take care of my parents when they become old I am the breaker of unspoken traditions  My aunt and her first daughter have both cared for my grandmother As my grandmother for her father  And my cousin for my…

All the water in my body is from the Gulf of Mexico  Generations back my people Came here from France by way of Canada settled in Louisiana I’m the first to be born in Texas  Funny how I wasn’t even  born on the Gulf Coast  But the Gulf is in the blood we left on…

I breathe air perfumed in jasmine a dried  lip canary sucked on. I nibbled their cherries for my first eight years.  I lived in a neighborhood; chalked roads, unpeeled windows, crouched fences I crawled through. I plucked blossoms from thorns  just for a perch.  Blood dripped from my cuticle, pricked. I smudged red back on…