The sun predicted this, with its rays determined through the blinds like blades of why. No one has given me an education for what this means, a destruction of firsts: our first black president, our first French kiss, pre-Apocalyptic, our first skinned knee like a heart in brown corduroy. The first time my grandmother voted after she earned her citizenship, American flag devout to her lapel. The first time I saw my grandfather’s autopsy report, & it felt like renal failure. Gunned down by a white cop. The first time I heard the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?”, the first time I kept that song on repeat, soothed by Kim Deal’s cradle of coos. The first time I drove until I was out of gas. The first time I waited up all night for my cheating father to come home, the first week I kept this on repeat. My first cigarette, train track, & belly button safety pin. When I realized my mother didn’t teach us Spanish in her desperation to protect us. When I noticed that memory was condemned to a pile of nectar & that I was guardian of that sweetness. That it was no coincidence I treated paper like skin. The first time I felt the burden of empathy. My first stretchmark. The first time I tasted coconut. The first time my brother confessed like a pile of bricks. My first Judy Garland, “Waltz with a Swing/Americana,” the needle screeching off the record. First love. My first earthquake, the ground shivering in its uncertainty, a pandemic of exclamation marks. The sofa rocked back & forth, but not too violently like hope. Hope, a first lasting longer than its next.