Why I Fight for Texas Even Though Everyone Says We Should Move
By Melissa McEver Huckabay
Sapphire flowers on the roadside.
Mountain laurels that smell like grapes.
Yellow sulphurs that flit among blooms.
Breakfast tacos and tiny salsa cups.
Muddy bayous that swallow your feet.
Pine trees that touch the sun.
Whataburger lines circling the block.
Dr. Pepper. Shiner. Blue Bell.
Sticky shirt by 8 a.m. Sunburn by 10.
Summers hiding in air conditioning.
Wearing shorts on Halloween.
Orange-lighted towers and cowboy hats.
Ferris wheels in front of the livestock show.
Two-stepping and scuffling boots.
Walks on Town Lake when it was Town Lake.
Oak-tree canopy on Rice Boulevard.
Peacocks squealing in Mayfield Park.
Coconut shrimp on South Padre Island.
Charro Days in Brownsville.
Marching bands and Friday night lights.
Stands selling strawberries, peaches.
Neighbors who took us for pony rides.
Picking dewberries on the side of the road.
My hometown before the Trump signs.
Believing hearts can change.
My mother, my grandfather,
my grandmother, my great-grandmother.
My father, even though he left.
My stepfather, who never left.
The blood that calls me here. Even though. Even though.
Melissa McEver Huckabay has an MFA in poetry from Texas State University and teaches writing at University of Houston-Downtown. Her poetry has appeared in SWWIM, Poetry South, Phoebe Journal, Thimble Literary Magazine, Sweet: A Literary Confection, and elsewhere, and is forthcoming in Minnesota Review. Her short fiction has won the Spider’s Web Flash Fiction Prize from Spider Road Press. She was a 2023 Contributor to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Photograph by RobinJP via a CreativeCommons license.
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