There is no accident at the core of this so-called “essay.” Ok, there is, but it’s not what you think.

I’ve classified myself and shaped my worth by my bones, by the skeletons of the people I used to be, and by the bodies of the people who left their marks on me.

Slaves, who did not volunteer to board the ships of chains and salts, and whose legacy casts a shadow much longer and darker than the fern, are not physically in this photo, yet their contribution is loud.

L. was a secret. You can’t know anything about him, except maybe that he stole a lot of coffee from Pret A Manger.

Soon today will be absorbed into all of those other days. And these words into oblivion.

I told her how a coconut will sit patiently, waiting for the summer rains to soak the ground beneath it so that it can begin life again. Some of them will shrivel up in the absence of water, their insides hollow as a drum.