Let me writhe on pavement ripped
by sun. Rumor has it that that’s how
my mother was born.

Rumor has it that that’s how I was born, too.
I picture my birth the way I picture the bible,
happening between two gentle and soft fingertips. Reverent whispers,
because, not to brag, but I was the first child. The first child,
the hardest child.

I like to think that it stormed that night.
That the rumors are wrong.
That I wasn’t born in the sun.
That the night of my birth, the electricity went out,
and my parents were left without light.

I like to think that they wept when I was born.
That they wept again when they could finally turn on a lamp,
and watch its sparks burst the way I did from the womb.