In 1987, I was born in a hospital far from our house.
In a place with Chinese food and a big room of babies.
When we finally came home: it was a mobile trailer
on stilts in front of the Mountains.
In July's heat, sticky and thick,
Their first baby together made restless nights of dense air.
Mosquitoes hung lowly, looking for ways
to enter through the screen door.
Mom would listen to their hum at 3am,
As I curled up close in her humid arms, drowsily crying.


I learned the rhythm of the frog's song that summer
all night long they chirped with melancholy
their soothing song remained present each night
as I started to grow comfortable to the world around me.
In the garden in front of the house 
but behind the mountains we found a burrow.
Little babies with their eyes closed and
ears close to their sides.


When summer ended the leaves crinkled
and the nights ended early. During my first winter
we couldn't sleep through the night and my
mother made videos on a super 8 using clay figures.
Tiny sculptures magically moved on grainy film.
My little legs gained strength slowly,
as the snow slept on the cold dirt.
I don't remember it, but I know the big lake
down Old Branch Road was frozen solid that year.

Now we are five. The end of the road is still unpaved.
But up there, in the beginning, hot tar is blackening
the road for the first time.You and I run on it quick with
burning bare feet eager for smooth afternoons in bike seats.
Although we know there are many people on earth,
it is hard to believe at the end of our quiet street
that there is more out there than this. These woods,
the stream, and family are what surround me.

Two hours south, down 684, there's a small white house.
It is tucked into a small hill with other small houses, but when
you're small, the houses and hill seem substantial.
Each day feels so long, you'd almost believe they could be endless.

Thin slate slabs meandered between crooked pines, covering worms and centipedes
At the edge of the yard, tall reeds formed a slender barricade, swaying.
They stood so slight, just thick enough to veil imagined people and creatures
we never got too close, for fear of danger lurking beyond our sight.

At night we would run instead of walking down the road to our house,
that same fear nibbling at our heels. Then from behind a tree my brother would
jump with a loud noise and frenetic flashlight. In our own house I worried about
the faces in the trees and what might be in my closet or under my bed.
In the daylight we were fearless: practicing running fast through prickle bushes.

The summer nights filled the air with flashes of light.
My sister and I ran with open jars through the alleyways between houses,
trying to capture lightning bugs. We'd study their small pink faces and
pinstriped wings as we watched them crawl around their small glass cages.