I wanted to let the anger speak, wanted to hold space for it. To give voice to the thing that I carry, that so many Black people carry, that we can’t express, that we’re told to keep to ourselves. That infests our bodies & kills our families, named pre-existing condition, economic inequality, systemic racism. This is what the anger had to say.

Getting a papsmear the other day, I started thinking how much medicine involves deliberately not seeing. Not in the way we’re talking about tonight, seeing as a spiritual communion. When a doctor cranks open your hoohaa with that icy, icy duck bill, they aren’t really looking at your vagina. They are observing it—objectively! Impersonally! It is a kind of seeing that is the opposite of communion.

I spent most of my childhood afraid of flying objects. Not UFOs, not bats, which sometimes flew in our Bronx backyard, but sporty flying objects: balls, rackets, any sort of equipment that might collide with my body unexpectedly (or worse, on purpose).

The first time it happens is the worst, because there is nothing familiar. Nothing repeated, no outline. Yet it happens the same: a phone call and then a before and after. A list of regrets, explanations.

A lyrical essay is part memoir, part poetry, part prose.

What does it mean to come head first into the world?

Brown Bear Brown Bear what do you see?

I saw a black bear walking up Cache Creek

and it’s still a black bear even though it’s fur was brown
because black bears come in different colors from black
to brown to cinnamon to blonde. The bear smelled
the biscuits and brisket from the Bar T 5 Chuckwagon cookout.

The flight from Seoul to New York
is fourteen hours long.
You will settle into your seat
and slacken your jaw. Before long,
your ears will pop with the rising elevation
as you cradle your package, holding it
softly and carefully like a Christmas ornament.