Arcing her hoe in the field, my grandmother cleaved through the cassava and across the spine ofa snake. Split, two halves of a hundred ribs, it gave her everything it held inside it, then died. Myfather sent money. The middlemen kept the money. My grandmother waited. She gave useverything she held inside her, then died. At the first school where I told this story, a girl askedme if we had buildings in Africa. (Yes, she was.) I wanted to say, No, Courtney, we all live intrees, but since my father is the chief I stay in the tallest one. But as in every other poem alreadywritten about this story, these stories, I said nothing, I remained silent, and my silence repeateditself across America until it became a cliché; I apologize for invoking that cliché. At the firstschool where I wrote about this story, a professor handed back my page and said You can’t writea poem like this, something dying in every stanza, but perhaps she did not say so in bad faith, so Iapologize. Even now, there is still so much to apologize for. I apologize to my family forrevealing that we come from a village. I apologize that there is a village to come from. Iapologize that this sounds like a speech and not a poem. I apologize for my poems. I evenapologize to the English department for writing identity poems but at least there’s a tree in thisone, technically multiple, trees, plural, I tried (habitual) to appease but I ran out of all theWordsworth imitations I had in me. My father joked If Morocco wins against France in theWorld Cup, they will stop giving us visas, so I apologize, also, that I risk offense at the leaststrategic time, I’m trying to determine how much of the world I still need, I should be smarterthan that, than to write this in the wrong room. A building is a group of rooms. Note: this poemis just one room. The hospital my grandmother would have traveled to, that my auntie did travelto, was scarcely a hospital and more so just a building to die in — yes, even Africans can affordto die in buildings, to witness death in more than just one room. The hallways in the buildingwould have been crowded. The sky at sunset seen from the building windows would have been awaning yellow, like our flag, like the sclera of our eyes. Suffering a mysterious illness, a localhealer may suspect that an animal was conjured inside the body of the afflicted. Upon cure, asnake might slither out of the mouth of the patient; a family of spiders might crawl out of theirthroat. When one says to another, I curse you, they are saying, literally, I put something inside ofyou that doesn’t belong there. How else to heal, then, than by leaving?