Where I'm From, modeled after George Ella Lyon

I am from telephone wire, from duct tape and WD-40. I am from the mildew on the bathtub caulking. (Gray, peeling, it smelled like mold.) I am from the planted marigolds, the fragile impatiens whose loose petals the squirrels pilfered each spring. I’m from sweet bologna and cream cheese, from Regina and Daniel. I’m from the don’t-talk-about-it’s and the don’t-tell-them-I-said-so’s, from go outside and get the stink blown off of you. I’m from Our Father, who art in Heaven, and fourteen stations I drew myself. I’m from Grand Marnier on the rocks and the baby grand, after-dinner mints and cloth napkins. From the deep scar of my mother’s Cesarean to the beauty parlor in my grandma’s basement. On my dresser stood a porcelain menagerie, chips of paint gone missing like a gypsy ancestry.

I am from those disturbances—dishes clanking in the kitchen sink—planned yet accidental.