Would not a proper memory of one’s father presuppose a proper father? I’d think so. In the memory I have there is nothing about either it or the father that qualifies as proper. Or usual. As it happens, it is my first-ever memory, one powerful enough to have lodged itself deep into the crevices of my baby brain and body, one to be carried through all the days, years and decades to follow. The thing is, until five decades on, I didn’t know for sure whether or not it was my father. …

          Under the artificial but highly industrialized canopy that was the D-train running directly over our heads, we stood outside for our first heart-to-heart conversation. It was summer in New York City, distinct in humidity and activity from summers anywhere else in the world, and the workshop process for your Black queer theater group with its five playwrights under fellowship had begun. Monumental was the fact that we were Black writers commissioned for actual pay, read: real money; …

          Last April, we had a winged visitor on our deck. The hummingbird’s trips to the sugar water had become more frequent. Peeking out from behind the patio’s glass doors, my husband and I followed her flight from the feeder. She landed right before our eyes, in an upturned fork of the overhanging bougainvillea. Her cup-shaped nest was made of thin twigs and speckled with bits of pale green. Inside, two eggs like alabaster were shaded by the …

          Last year I visited the city in which we became friends, and I tried to find that pie place. It must have closed at some point. I never knew its name or address, only that it was west of the expressway. I got off at every exit, muttering to myself that it had to be somewhere, even it was east of the sun and west of the moon. I wanted to find it and order four slices of pie and eat them with two forks—a bite for you, and a bite for me, …

          “Are you a doctor?”            The voice hangs in the air, speaks twice, before I realize that it is addressing me. The words come from a woman who has just squeezed in beside me on the concrete bench fixed to the subway platform. Many pounds overweight, hair crayon-yellow and frizzed beyond combing, she eyes my white pants and shoes, her eyes rimmed round with blue pencil like a …