for my good fortune—no concussion, no

fracture—as if I had expected I’d be able to be

struck by the earth, a wrecking ball,

and not feel it—

as when someone on the other side of the world,

or the city, is struck in my name, I do not feel it.

Meditation During the Sufferings and Deaths of Others

I did not deserve to be beaten,

and I did not deserve ballet lessons—

except insofar as everyone deserves ballet lessons.

Me mum thought I was well worth beating.

She would not have thought that I deserved to starve.

I deserved the milk in her breasts—I had put it there.

When I was a baby, she withheld food to clock-train me.

She did not notice she was privileged

always to have enough food to feed her children.

And there were books in the house, I did not deserve them

except insofar as everyone deserves them.

I did not notice it was luck that I had them,

that for every book I had, someone else did not have one.

But it was not just luck that my mother beat me.

I was the second daughter of the second daughter of the second

daughter,

the one on whom the mothers in that line

exercised their so-far sonlessness.

I did not have a second daughter,

or she was the tiny thing lost to that long-ago flu.

I did not inherit the taste for beating children

or the belief it was the only way to make them behave.

But how did I know that every soul was equal? They kept saying so.

And you could see it, around some people’s body,

the space around it, the light in the space,

a kind of envelope, or surface tension,

as if they were whole. Those were the popular kids, the kind ones.

I did not deserve their friendship,

but sometimes I got it—because I made them laugh.

I think I was born funny—born seeing funny.

There was what they said, and what they meant, and what they did.

There was a disjunct—and it hit my funny bone,

and then like a xylophone player I hit their funny bone

and we flushed and heated and gave out the sweet percussion of our

squeaky barking.

I had the luck to earn their laughter.

But so much lies outside deserving.

I do not deserve this house.

But I do not deserve someone

breaking in and killing me.

I chose ballet lessons because I loved dancing, and the feeling, like

begging to be liked—a kind of sneaky labor.

Going to Miss Pring’s garage was like walking into a church hymn and

being its turning.

What does deserve even mean? It means dessert

when you have eaten every bite on your plate.

The concept of dessert presupposes a ruler—

second daughter of a second, or not.

And when you become your own ruler?

When you rise through the dead leaves, the pieces of torn web, the

trails of slugs, when you become a guttersnipe and lift your