"Genesis" by Angie Sharma ('19)
"You know, I've never asked you
where you're from."
Without a second thought,
I say,
"I am from Brooklyn."
A pause—
it begs me to say "but,"
and it demands
extenuating circumstances.
(How dare I claim New York?)
It makes me feel
uncomfortable, but
I do not yield.
I let that pause
bounce off me,
and my unconcerned expression
now demands that you continue
this unfortunately started conversation.
" ... Oh. I thought ...
You just don't look
like you are
from New York."
Your awkward mumbling,
the way you search for
the next word,
next phrase,
next sentence,
something you think is not
(and I hope is less)
offensive—
that little inhale,
that little hiccup, and
I understand that I'm
embarrassed
by your embarrassment.
Now I start to doubt my answer.
To hell with it—
I turn off my mind and
mechanically, monotonously,
sigh the well-rehearsed,
well-practiced explanation:
"i moved here last year my mom's ukrainian my dad is from nepal"
There, there.
The incongruence
between what your eyes see and
the image of a person
from New York
that your brain has caused to be
is, thank god, resolved.
(A relieved
"Oh, so that's what it is"
signals that we've avoided
a potentially paralyzing impasse.)
But wait—
let us go back:
Where am I from?
I'm from the same stardust,
the same primordial Word
that was with God—
the thought,
the energy,
the concentrated nothing
that turned into
the barely meaningful
and the most important
everything
that now surrounds us—
I'm of the same intention,
the same slight glitch,
the hurtling mass of matter
that landed a little off,
but with a cause
and what a cause—
every little bit of
knowledge accepted
by my conscious mind,
every little bit of
knowing carved
into my subconscious—
I am our ancestry
from the beginning
of beginning—
I am our progeny
until the end of time—
the feelings—
debilitating madness,
and debilitating clarity,
and incapacitating grief,
and pure, pure joy,
and the make-belief,
and the reality—
everything that makes you you—
you probably have never realized
that it makes New York, and
it makes me, too.