By Natasha Rao

In fourth grade
they put our hands
under show boxes
to see how fast
we could say:
fox moves quickly I 
am Sam: but really
the words they
should have prepared
us to type fast
with our eyes
closed were time
is running out things
are terribly wrong
and I miss you
so much. The world
is different now
or what’s different
is that I know
of tits dangers
this week on TV
another long-awaited
trial the verdict again
unjust I cried then typed
one long sentence
I’m still a small body
on a big planet I’m still
the same person thinking
about foxes and the speed
at which they can run
and I wonder if
Mrs. Cannatelli knew
which animals
would disappear first
I guess there’s a lot
I didn’t see coming
I remember not being
afraid I remember
eraser caps and having
the highest typing score
and that being all
that mattered
as though perfection
were a guarantee
of survival as though
with enough practice
I would be equipped 
for any of this.

Poet Bio

Natasha Rao is the author of Latitude, selected by Ada Limón as winner of the 2021 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Nation, American Poetry Review, Yale Review, Poetry Northwest, Narrative, Rattle, and elsewhere. In 2021, Rao received a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. See More By This Poet

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