“What do you feel your constitution is? What did you come in with?”

A fat white baby with a red face is born. Nearly ten pounds! Her mother has been eating a lot of nutrients because her father has been sitting her down every night, feeding her biscuits dense with these nutrients. The baby’s name is Rebecca and she weans very early. Her mother’s breast is too simple. She likes the complexity of bottled milk, the way every hand that holds it seems to feed her something different. There is a richness in this diversity. She is hungry for it. So many others to know! She uses her bright mind to learn to speak with these others. Too young to speak so many words, and yet she can. She plays make-believe games no toddler should understand. Her games have no props, imagination is enough. And in her mind’s eye are people, people, people.

Thirty years later she sits at a keyboard. She writes that the context of my solitude holds unusual relevance. She writes that she is catalytic, liminal. She writes that who I am is alone.

Books on the bookshelf next to her. Books on the bookshelf behind her. Books lining her childhood. Words were the closest thing she had to people after sound disappeared.

She is tired of the brightness of her mind, which, like the unintelligible crossfire of conversation, drowns out the fact of words being exchanged at all.