In the beginning, I was neither image nor identity. Time was a quickening; I was my own dark-watered well. There was no hankering there, just another native world and its wishes. Who is Memory? Why does she matter to History? Their far-off laughter uncurled me—I stretched out to hear more closely.

In the beginning, I was born a man-girl with teeth for toes and a headful of hair hiding the nubs of horns. This was before ally or self-portrait, prodigal performer or forgotten prop. Soon, I was collecting sounds I mimicked at my elders’ commands to avoid my own noise. I found myself hiding in a closet

beside bags of clothes only the dead would wear. That wasn’t the first time I spooned myself. Yes, there were large and small storms. I had a sister until the accident, and a brother was willed after months of grief-graft. By then, I was already distant, a tumbleweed rubbing my thorns late into the night when those yesteryears sidle near.

Isn’t that why you’re here? In the end, there’s only one way to begin an origin story: at the beginning. I know a good one: a monster named Joy- in-the-Margins learns the nature of light by revising the dark into song with every register of her seven tongues. Ready? Let’s begin. Verse 0. Surah 1.