Poem: Uvalde

What I remember of Uvalde is their debate team,
a girl with a snakeskin briefcase.

The name, a jewel in the mouth, like others—Guadalupe, Bandera—
redolent of sky, space, heat, the sense of a journey, roads turning and turning.

What I saw when I looked out the window of the car
was an example, in landscape form, of all I could do and be.

I rarely thought about my parents’ gun, zipped in its holster,
invariably locked in a glovebox.

Sometimes, when I was scared at night, listening to wind or coyotes,
I considered its uselessness.

Other people kept their guns close at hand, or hunted.
We ate their venison in hunting season.

Guns were far from my mind when I decided to come back,
pregnant with you, after years living on either coast.

People would say Texas? Doesn’t everybody have a gun?
No, I laughed. Not everybody.

What I thought about when I thought about home was wildflowers
rampaging across the land in spring; about fishing in shallow bays.

I thought Uvalde would be a name you knew from stories I told
of the girl with the snakeskin briefcase.

Or maybe you would know it from driving country roads, stopping for tacos.
I hoped you would watch the sky, the hills, as I had, and contemplate the possibilities.

Instead, Uvalde will mean something else to you.
It won’t feel like a creek-polished stone when you say it.

Uvalde—once a place, now an everlasting trigger. Like the others.

We’ll drive west in a week’s time, as we do when summer starts,
across the coastal plains, climbing gradually into the hills.

We’ll watch the clouds, darting, shape-shifting, like children playing tag,
their shadows mingling on the ground below.