At the start of this narrative, I will pretend

Not to be alive, not to be

Speaking to you from the living earth.

To help you. I will pretend

The circumstances of our being

Here, together, are casual—

And not incidental

Of this awkward dilemma: How to co-exist

When you would like me dead.

For simplicity. For lack of threat.

In this narrative I will look

At you from a distance, as into the future,

No more real than I am,

Sitting here in my off-white body which I can feel

But is somehow less important, less

Urgent than the problem it poses. 

Sometimes, when I write this kind of narrative,

My mind flees and all I see above is text

At once strange, because I don’t know

How to hold it, and familiar, because I wrote it—

Send out the memo, I’m nearly done here.

How much more of this life to live? 30 years, if I’m lucky,

I bet. If my life ends, will my brothers’ finally begin?

Who made my mother? Who killed my father who lives?