Texting you about floodplainsin the ancient world and alluvialtransforms into I loved. Your namecannot stand on its own, predictivetext attaches -esque, refashions youinto a quality of yourself, digitalsynecdoche. One of my children's names onlyappears in ALL CAPS no matter my attempts to save herin my dictionary; the quietest squalling across the screen.How do we decide where the ancient begins?The end of the century in which we came of ageis a rift valley, our memories dropping steeplyat the margins. To describe it to my children I say: there wasno way to reach us if we wandered. No monumentsof our days until the film was developed.What we knew of time was organized on notecardsin narrow wooden drawers, and we had to takethe bus and walk up several flights of stairs to search it. I textabout what I long for and cannot reachthis year, no nation, just sunlighton striated hillsides in early spring, and terra rossa becomes terror.Do you think the agents assigned to us weartrench coats and dark sunglasses? Do they writetheir reports about us in invisible ink? In ancient times,the floodplain of the Jordan was coveredin reeds, tamarisk, and willows.I regret mentioning the tamarisk, howit ushers in multiple congregations,concertina wire. How my longingsare only publishable as anti-pastorals,refined alterations of a text that contend,collapse. My poem was in that first revelation,the text confiding that what enduresof the alluvial plain, the earth of ancestry, is love.