Stopped at the crossroad on 14th street, ice clean as an apple slice under my wheels, I am waiting for my turn and I don’t know yet about looking back which is why I cannot describe the color or make of what hit me, moving too fast to brake on the black, and my blue Volkswagen shoots out into oncoming lanes and once there begins to spin — and that is where time slows, like they always say, forming an opening in the day that was already thick with news. The man comes to the car window, wants to know if I’m okay, and I tell him I’m pregnant, that I just found out this morning, and he looks like he will faint, and I open the door and step out into the street, and this, I believe, is the story of conception; how my daughter used momentum and ice and velocity and impact to pierce the atmosphere and enter the world. Reprinted with permission from Barrow Street Copyright © 2003 by Kelly Madigan

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