Your Very First Memory (You’ve Already Forgotten It, But I’ll Remember For You)

You were born when all the alarms went off. Three days after, the power was slammed shut by an avalanche and we sat in the dark because propane was mighty expensive in ’05.

You were born from your crying mother, and like any good imitator, took after her and began screaming.

Your very first entry into this world was a howl.

You were born when snow was still on the ground, even though the crocuses were coming up. You were born, on the edge of nowhere and somewhere, caught between the juncture of the furthest edge of the world and modernity.

When they bundled you up, they bundled you tight, cause the winter, just like you, had a tendency to bite. You didn’t have your teeth yet, but we knew it, because, goddamn, was it in your lineage.

You were born in a bathtub. You were born drowning. You weren’t born dead and you weren’t born alive. You were born dying. You were born under a bad sign in a birthing center, ten minutes and ten thousand dollars from a hospital. You were new and perfect like a good exit wound. And you were new and perfect to hold, to cherish, to wrestle into the dirt, to toss into the snow, to cradle.

When we took you home to that trailer park and you slept in the car seat, we hefted you with one arm inside and laid you down to sleep on the couch with the radio played low. You slept through the snowstorm, the salmon killing, the crocuses blooming in the front yard, and the gunshots, and the car crashes, and the drunk neighbors.

And you slept through the avalanche, too.

Nothing bad has happened yet.

Everything bad has already happened.