I am my mother’s skin. My father’s fruit. Once, I was a shout in the darkness. A sentimental seed. Tumbling in creekwater, and often, against the current. Upwards, molting, birthing, dying like a brave creature with gills. In the morning, I am at the table where you pull apart a warm loaf of sourdough with tired hands. As you drive the familiar road and become witness to winds, to the very beginning of a wildfire, the smoke filling your lungs. The sky brims with white clouds, drifting over dreams, leaches through your windows. The grass burns. Eyes, too, sting. That night, I am in my throat when you reach your fingers beneath the sheets. I fruit in the darkness like a sentimental shout, current rushing through my creekwater skin. In the morning, again, I am a familiar road where it rises like bread, our bodies brimming inside the house, witnessed by the dreaming of the winds drifting like wildfire. I am burning, like eyes. Like grass. My mother and father.

I reach for your tired hands, the beginning filling our lungs – like birth. Today, I am.

One day, I will be dying. And brave, molting, pulling myself upwards.