The letter came just as I was despairing. I was sitting at the little table in my kitchen, a hand over my face, considering what I should do. The room was all white and green, as it always is, as I like to keep it, but I felt none of its whiteness and greenness now. I felt midnight blue. I did not know how to help my son. Should I sell the apartment? Where, then, would I go? Or my archive? I had not planned to sell this until later, when I can no longer write. A retirement fund. Grocery money. I did not have savings--no poet has savings unless they are born to wealth. I had my papers, I had my apartment--Mother's apartment--and that was all. A diamond brooch. The Cynthia Davis print on my bedroom wall, given to me when we were both young. I would not finish my new collection until the new year, and even then, what is a new collection worth? It would keep me in bread and butter and maybe kiwifruit and wine; tinned salmon, aged cheddar, the occasional curry from Queen's Thai. Perhaps some new clothes now and then. Of course, I was being parsimonious. I could wear the wardrobe I had. I could buy cheaper wine. But then couldn't I also decline to contribute? What did it matter if I gave Courtney ten or twenty or fifty thousand dollars? He would buy a house all the same, just a smaller one. He had his own savings, and his father would contribute, and also I had the impression Lucie's parents were giving them money. Courtney would be well sorted. I did not need to give him anything. I did not need to sell my home, nor to bequeath the cardboard bankers' boxes in the bedroom closet, the ones full of unpublished poems and emails from colleagues that I printed sometimes, in moments of procrastination and vanity. Not yet. But oh, I felt terrible. I felt like a paper thing, a folded bird. I felt humiliated--that I could not help him, that I had not sufficiently prepared. "It's all right, I didn't expect her to be able to contribute," Courtney would say to Lucie, and she would nod her head. The son of a poet grows up knowing his mother will not take care of him, not in certain ways. Courtney was thirty-nine now; this wasn't the first time he had been forced to forge his own path through the world. The screen of my tablet flashed, only the flash was not to something brighter but something darker. Is there a word for that? I wondered. A dimming? A death? I finished the dregs of my black tea. The doorbell sang. A courier stood in the hallway, looking doltish. "Marian Ffarmer?" he asked. "Yes," I said. "Thank you," and drew an & on his electronic clipboard. The envelope he gave me was slender and well made. My father was a stationer, and he taught me to recognize quality. Part of me, the part of me that came from him, the Ffarmer part, preferred not to tear open the seal. I could leave the envelope here, on the little desk by the door, a closed and handsome object. "I am a closed and handsome object," I said to no one, to the room. I ripped the envelope open with the stinging end of my finger. I had not been prepared for the way aging changed my hands, made it hurt to open a letter. I unfolded the contents. Two sheets stapled, the letterhead of one of the most valuable companies in the world, a company whose services I used online many times a day. I had no idea why they were writing me. I awaited something pro forma, purely administrative, yet: Dear Marian Ffarmer, the letter began. You are one of the great writers of this century. The Company was asking me to collaborate with them on a poem--"an historic partnership between human and machine." One week in California, composing a "long poem" with a 2.5-trillion-parameter neural network, which is to say an artificial intelligence, a robot, a genie in a bottle. Excerpts from the finished work would be "published internationally," with the complete poem appearing online. The letter concluded by stating that they would be pleased to offer me sixty-five thousand dollars for my contribution. I examined the signature--one of the company's vice presidents, an elegant and extravagant name, rendered in sapphire-colored ink. Dear Lausanne, I replied in an email that afternoon. I was happy to receive your letter. I went into the bedroom. I stared at the print from Cynthia--a portrait of me at twenty-five, before I had failed at anything. Excerpted from Do You Remember Being Born? by Sean Michaels All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.