I want to know your name. The God-given one. I want to know if your teeth look like my grandmother’s. I want to know the way your mouth curves amid joy. I want to know what joy feels like in bondage. I want to know if that is possible. Tell me about possibility. Tell me how you knew how to carry the brilliance of your own life. Tell me the way the hair on your skin rises during a New England winter. Tell me how you survived being a Black girl in New England. Is it the same way I survived being a Black girl in New England? Isn’t it true that Black girls can survive the unimaginable? When will others stop forcing Black girls to survive the unimaginable? My therapist tells me that in raising my son, I am reparenting myself. There is something about mothering that breaks the capacity of time. Which is how I know you must have been mothering your young self as you were brought across The Atlantic. Was it watching yourself from another dimension that made you survive? I don’t know the true story, yet I know it is possible that a version of yourself kept your own self safe, long before someone thought purchasing you would. There is something about trauma that forces us to infinitely save ourselves. It is a transcendent power, this saving, even when the body has died. Phillis, did you know you live in and against time? That what made you write yourself alive is still breathing, breathing, breathing?