I missed so much, running to get to the top of the mountain, that instead of sitting down to take in the view, I fretted over conquering the next one. I was a working-class Brixton girl figuring out which fork to use in the Palace, and everything was brand new. I’d say to her, yes, be concerned for the future, but don’t forget to find the joy in the present.

How I fled my shitty high school to spend my days in New York lost in library stacks, reading obscure texts by dead people, most of whom never dreamed a face like mine floating over their sentences—and least of all that those sentences would save me. But none of that matters now. What matters is that all of it, even if I didn’t know it then, brought me here, to this page, to tell you everything you’ll never know.

Whether we want to or not, we are traveling in a spiral, we are creating something new from what is gone. “Make me young again,” Lan said. “Make me black again, not snow like this, Little Dog. Not snow.

Maybe we look into mirrors not merely to seek beauty, regardless how illusive, but to make sure, despite the facts, that we are still here. That the hunted body we move in has not yet been annihilated, scraped out. To see yourself still yourself is a refuge men who have not been denied cannot know.

The more vividly you can picture what you want, the better. You usually have to know where you’re going in order to get there.