Outskirts of Victoria, Texas

As my sisters help me to unload my bags
we look out from the gravel driveway and
there are no houses blocking our vision so
we can see all the way until the Earth
curves and the blue turns a shade of white.
When we were little, we would scream—
I mean we would holler—into the empty space
before us; like the coyote, we’d give a call.
We’d howl until we gasped for breath
until the air had left our small bodies
then we would go silent and wait
from across the grasses for
the echo to come back.
This is our land, it whispered,
and we would whoop in approval,
as if only we existed. We owned the world.

Originally published in R2: The Rice Review.