Hi, I'm Megan Fernandes. I'm a poet living in New York, and I'm here today to read you a poem of mine called "The Edward Albee Barn".

The Edward Albee Barn

I write you letters, but lately also like to make you diagrams of buildings in which I have walked, showing you the entryway, the window where

I saw a steely rabbit, the yawning of an open barn door. I am getting better at drawing stairs and hallways, labeling old wall phones and record players,

soon the diagram becomes so detailed that each bookcase must give you at least five titles so you understand the personality of a room.

Here are the dried lavender and the free weights and the tree spores and the lone tennis racket. Here is the outlet where I was electrocuted

when the case came off my phone charger and my thumb bruised black and then callused, where I learned that burn creams work on both

electrical and solar scalds. This is the BBQ, I note, where I wrapped a sweet potato in foil and heated it until it became utter mush.

Here's where I planted thyme, but it was too late and it wouldn't grow. Here is where I speak to you on the phone and ask about your mother and

then your grandmother and then you ask about my mother and all the mothers. Here is the green picnic table and upstairs, a desk

where I obsessively write you letters and stick them in blue envelopes and bike them downtown to the one postbox and watch them get eaten up.