IV

D and the beautiful woman built a house out of Kramp products and, some time later, had a daughter they called M. I am M.

Soon, my parents designed a learning plan that would allow me to comprehend the things that a child—a girl, in this case—needed in order to make her way in the world.

Thus, I began early with a classification of things.

In my first year of life I discovered, for example, that there is something called day and something called night, and that everything that happens in life fits into one of those two categories.

The second year I learned to look out the window. My parents told me that, over the course of my life, I would win and lose many things. I shouldn’t worry; the world would still be out there.

The third year I discovered the existence of people. Once more, my parents used the window to explain to me that people could be classified as either summer people or winter people. I still don’t know what they meant by that.

In my fourth year of life, I stepped out onto the patio of my house and saw fireflies. I decided that this would be my very own, unclassifiable memory. Fireflies that never stopped glowing.