English Language Arts: Creative Writing (TEKS.ELA.9-12.11.A) Practice Test

After the call, I drove to the old workshop the way you remember a melody: not note by note, but by a pressure in the chest. Dust hung in the light, and the bench still carried the bruised outline of my father's hands. He was upstairs, sleeping carefully, the stroke making a map I did not know how to read. I wandered, waiting for a language to return. There were jars of screws labeled in his tidy slant, saws with their teeth showing, the radio welded to one station. I wanted to tell him I had learned to measure twice, cut once, but the phrase felt like a tourist in my mouth. We have not spoken well in years. In the silence, I practiced greetings I would abandon. When I climbed the steps, the boards announced me, and something in the house paused, as if considering whether to forgive me.

I walk the River Walk before the vendors lift their bright umbrellas, before the heat puts its hand on the back of my neck. Water moves with practiced purpose, shouldering yesterday's coins. Under the cypress knees, I think of my grandmother who sold tamales from a cooler, her vowels steady as a drumbeat. Tour boats pass even at this hour, guides reciting histories that skim and shine. I know the story they tell, and the story we kept, folded in the pantry with the oilcloth. A mariachi tune leaks from somewhere, unfinished, like a sentence you mean to forgive. The city wakes in layers: ovens, alarms, pigeons, the slow persuasion of sun. In a window, I catch myself: a figure stitched between two narratives. I keep walking. The stones have memorized a thousand feet; they accept mine without comment, and the river, practiced and polite, keeps its counsel this morning.