a list of things i did this summer

This poem was published as part of Bayou Blues: Ecopoetics of the Gulf South, a collection of ecopoetry centered on Houston, Texas curated by Hurricane Season editor, Aarohi Sheth.

a chopped and screwed beat, i sketched a map of my heart. i made a birthday cake from scratch. i counted all the bayous i have ever loved. i shoved my fingers into fruit. i realized i may never be cured from highways. leaving houston, all i could see was the promise of green and white. i watched my little brother graduate, and i wore green and white. i lived in my childhood home. i cried in the kitchen. i wrote a list of everything in the house that reminded me of my grandparents. the light was bright in the afternoon, making the black wasps crawling up the windowpanes glow like fluorescent flecks. i went to my first funeral and listened to my kakasay that if reincarnation is real, he wished you could be his dad forever. i lamented with lovebugs. i pickled lemons and carrots and tomatoes. i called my grandma for help even though she never tells me exact measurements. i tried to keep a dream diary. i got at least 15 new tattoos, wounding myself with images i kept closest. i gave a tarot reading to a stranger in hermann park. he asked me if it meant he should leave his wife. i contemplated having kids. i sang to the cicadas. no one tells you how old memories feel like a good rain—a balm to soothe the flesh. i danced in the rain. i danced in my old bedroom. i danced in the nighttime. i forgot about the griefs of home, about the bruise we call homecoming. i saw my first lightning bug. during the heatwave, i splashed cold water on my face again and again and again. i remembered the freeze and the Hurricane. i watched the empty lot across the street be reborn into a mansion. after sex (sweetly symbolic, yet spontaneous), i began to speak in cliches. i imagined working in an office. not a scary one, but one next to the sun. i felt an orange heaviness. i let myself be swallowed whole by it. i watched the moon flood in trouble. i held funerals for past versions of myself. i held onto the potential of a purifying rain. i held my heart: broken by a girl with a crescent smile. what is the organ that holds how scared i am to leave? you wouldn't just make sure i ate. you'd create an entire universe.