This poem is called Origin Story. This is true. My mother and my father met at the Greyhound

bus station in the mid-80s in Chicago. My mother, all thick glass and afro puff, came west

on the train when she was 19, lived in a friend's house and cared for her children, played tambourine

in a shotgun cover band. My father, all sleeveless and soft eye ran away from home when he was 17,

memia graft communist newspapers and drew comic books, like this one, for sale, one dollar.

My mother bought one. Love is like a comic book. It's fragile and the best we can do is protect it

in whatever clumsy ways we can, plastic and cardboard, dark rooms and boxes and in this way

something never meant to last might find its way to another decade, another home, an attic,

a basement intact. Love is paper. And if my parents love was a comic book, it never saw

polyvinyl, never felt a backing. It was curled into a back pocket for a day at the park,

lent to a friend, read under covers, reread, hanging upside down over the back of the couch,

memorized, mishandled, worn thin, staples rusted. And a love like that doesn't last, but it has a

good ending. Thank you.

Shy City, please join me in welcoming to the stage the hosts of the Code Switch podcast,

Shireen Madisal Miraji in Jean Denby.

Oh my goodness. Wow, this is a lot.

They're coming out. Yeah, right. This is a lot of people. I told you. Good thing I can't see them all.

So a love like that doesn't last, but it has a good ending. Yes, true. True story. Is that you?

Oh, I hope that I last. I hope I stick around. Oh, am I the good ending? Yes, yes, I am. That's me.

That's me. Yeah, yeah. My parents are not together, but I'm alive. So, it's a lot of comic book

imagery in your poem. Yes, there is. This week the internet has told us that they want you to be

the next writer for the Invisible Iron Man. What? Yes, the internet is a fickle, fickle mistress.

...