One Word: Bitch

In our column One Word, writers expound on a single word of their choosing. For this iteration, we asked Danez Smith to write about the word that underpins their poem “my bitch!” in our Spring 2019 issue. 

I can tell who’s calling me from across the room by the pitch of their . Fati goes up on the  so that it’s almost a shriek. Hieu gets a little gravelly, dark and full, as precursor to some good gossip. Blaire says it flat, matter-of-fact, like