A week after I’m born, I draw a face from someone else’s memory. It’s a smiling man, the sides a mullet of red garland. Mother explains everyone hanging on our walls is dead. She adds the picture did not cause the death, which is a relief to me. The dead are nonplussed either way. Mother wants a picture of the three of us. My dead grandmother sighs, does the favor. She has spent too long inside her last photograph. Her ghost is sepia-stained, low resolution. The future has whiter whites. After three flashes, she reappears in her frame, somehow a little younger. The camera bounces, nestles into the carpet. In all the pictures, Father holds my drawing upside-down.

After I’m born, my first mistake is pine trees. I find a VHS tape at the pine tree’s roots, plastic wrapping smooth. The nursery video confirms babies have permission to stick anything in their mouths. The branches prickle, trace premature red wrinkles across my body. When I cry, the tree wedges itself between my teeth, carves out black cavities inside my soft cheeks. I sneeze needles and cones. Later that evening, I begin to glow. Gathering starlight seeks to make itself known. Brightness oscillates based on whether my eyes are open, whether I’m yawning. The airplane overhead circles. Descends. The pine tree bends, sheds. The best captains understand the chubbiest constellations call out for them.