This was a prose piece I performed for the 2024 KC Winter Solstice celebration, written by me

I have a scar running from right above my navel to the right end of my abdomen. You see, I was born premature, with a volvulus, which means that my intestines were tangled and blue. I spent the first months of my life in the NICU in New York, my dad trying to get what time he could from a job that required travel to spend with me. The scar is from surgery to untangle my intestines - which is a thing we can do now!

All that has happened since then. Every laugh, every smile, every bite and every sip, every friend I have changed, every word I have ever uttered.

All of it almost didn't happen.

There's a morbid exercise where everyone in the room flips a coin, and we imagine that everyone that got tails died before 15. Just a few centuries ago, child mortality was a coin flip.

I don't need to flip a coin. I already know I got tails.

And yet.

And yet, I am still here.

Thank you.