Even gunshots and backfire, the howl of trains at night, the wind against your windows. Everything could be drumming, whether the rhythm was kept or it strayed. You were finding out that everything made a sound. The timbre of taps, the din of dings, silverware clangs in kitchens, door knocks, knuckle cracks, head scratches. You tapped every surface you found in front of you, listened for the sound things made back at you when you hit them. Once you were out in the world, running and jumping and climbing, you tapped your toes and fingers everywhere, all the time. When your dad brought out the kettledrum, you’d kick her in time with it, or in time with her heartbeat, or with one of the oldies mixtapes she’d made from records she loved and played endlessly in your Aerostar minivan. “Maybe it just means he knows the rhythm so good he doesn’t always hit it when you expect him to.”īut, once you got big enough to make your mom feel you, she couldn’t deny it. “He doesn’t even know what a drum is,” your mom said. Before you were born, before your body was much more than heart, spine, bone, skin, blood, and vein, when you’d just started to build muscle, before you showed, bulged in her belly, as her belly, before your dad’s pride could belly-swell at the sight of you, your parents were in a room listening to the sound your heart made. Before you were born, your halves inside them moved to Oakland. You were the light in the wet of your parents’ eyes as they met across that fireplace in ceremony. Before you were born, you were your dad’s decision to move away from Oklahoma, to northern New Mexico to learn about a Pueblo guy’s fireplace. You were on your way when she did not make it across the country but sputtered and spiralled and landed in Taos, New Mexico, at a peyote commune called Morning Star. Before you were born, you were an idea your mom got into her head in the seventies, to hitchhike across the country and become a dancer in New York. Before you were born, you were chased, beaten, broken, trapped in Oklahoma. You were white, you were brown, you were red, you were dust. Before you were born, you were the idea to make it to California for gold or bust. You were two halves of a million different possibilities, a billion heads or tails, flip-shine on spun coin. Before you were born, you were a nested Russian doll of possibility in your mom’s ovaries. Before you were born, you were an egg in your mom, who was an egg in her mom. You were a race, a dying off, a breaking through, an arrival.

Before you were born, you were a head and a tail in a milky pool-a swimmer.

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