“If You Knew the Airplane You Were About To Board Had an 89% Chance of Crashing, Would You Get On It?"

by Anne Panning

Casper Westera

Asked the genetic counselor. Your father was a scratch-off gambler who never beat the odds. But Careful Watch Dog is your animal spirit. Besides, Angelina Jolie has whispered in your ear: “Don’t blame the mutants! Be brave!” Genetics is a black & white totem pole. A slender staircase made of ribbons and blood. Lie quietly at night and decide: to be or not to

Be a woman who amputates her breasts. Carry a wicker basket containing your ovaries, tubes and uterus like Easter eggs. Begging alms for the pain. Alms for your babies’ home, that strong, sturdy cave. Foreclosed and slated for demolition. Once you nursed your daughter in a Port-a-Potty at your town’s carnival. The body does not forget.

Just think: saliva stewed for centuries in your stout Germanic ancestors. Long before your tiny tube of spit branded you BRCA1+. Don’t despair. When the sun dips low on a warm summer’s night, grill a batch of underwire bras over hot coals. Invite no one over. Turn the charred skeletons to well-done. Look up: you’ve sent smoke signals to your mother. Hello. I’m still here.

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Anne Panning recently published her first memoir, Dragonfly Notes: On Distance and Loss. She has also published a novel, Butter, as well as a short story collection, The Price of Eggs, and Super America, which won The Flannery O’Connor Award and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. She has also published short work in places such as Brevity (5x), Prairie Schooner, The Florida Review, Quarterly West, Kenyon Review, and River Teeth. Her essays have received notable citations in The Best American Essays series. She teaches creative writing at SUNY-Brockport and is working on her next memoir, Bootleg Barber: A Daughter’s Memoir.