"I just don't know what challenges I've faced..."

Girl next to me, senior in high school, chatting animatedly with her tutor, rattling off a lengthy list of potential universities: MIT, Duke, Harvard, Stanford, UCLA. University of Michigan is her safety school.

Before they dive into the complex work of detangling essay prompts, the two of them — one, dirty blonde, rower, sweatshirt and headband; the other, middle-aged, peacoat, and headscarf — giggle with excitement about the high-schooler's recent reads: Walden, The Crucible, Beowulf. For fun, Catcher in the Rye, and Great Expectations. They muse for a few moments about the depth and beauty of Thoreau's work, and the raw cadence of Holden Caulfield's narration.

Finally, they enter business — both pull out their laptops, retrieving college application essay drafts from their proper folders, and on some cloud drive, review her essays. An issue arises.

"I had so many plans and aspirations to go farther, and now I really feel held back from achieving my potential, but also... I just don't know what challenges I've faced," the young woman says.
"Hmm... it is hard to think of a response to that, isn't it?" the tutor responds. For the first time in awhile, they pause in silence.

--
I can't help but fill the silence for them, and think of so many of my students, who face quite the opposite dilemma: I have so many challenges to face, I just don't know what plans and aspirations I can have. For a moment, I am remembering yesterday, and the smell of sweat and Expo markers and Frito chips that filled my classroom. I am remembering the bodies filing in and out, some on task, some off ask, most, desperate to learn and unsure of how to do so.

In another moment, I am remembering my own high school experience, littered with late-nights on laptops, churning up essays, and plans, and driving to the 24-hour Starbucks to do research, (or at least try, and instead, complain about ex-boyfriends), and the raging discomfort of being unsure of whether I would get into one private four-year university, or the other.

But here she is, here I am, and there they are. For many of them, college is still just a lofty dream, a set of shiny buildings, a gateway to the NBA or the NFL, a far-off land with no parents — a dream. And we all had the same dream, once, didn't we?

It's something like guilt, and something like anger. I've pored over achievement gap statistics for the past four years, and yet, the opportunity gap between the affluent and the poor has not been more perfectly painted than in a ten-minute eavesdropping at a cafe.

After all of this, I sigh. "What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun."

--
I've tuned out for a bit, but jumped back to the conversation just in time to hear the tutor respond excitedly,

"Oh! That's the perfect sob story! They'll eat that right up."

Admissions crisis averted. All will be well.

Cherry, Cherry Coffee

The slow bend of reconciliation
sidles in through the side door
two hands touching on the shopping cart
your elbow grazing mine in a stuffy cafe
a stolen glance at your eyelashes fluttering while you read
the first smile
the first hand hold
all over again, and somehow
more radiant,
a ream of sorrow and sadness
eradicated by a mysterious shining of
us, again
we, again.
So this is love,
ba da da dum,
so this is love.

The Heavy, The Light

When the stick of the day spreads around you like
that old quilt, the batting spilling out and over,
falling through the air, surrendering to the weight of the world;

I am dragging my feet through the slosh of a jungled place
a sometimes-alive and mythical,
dark and growling,
shadowed, tangled, somewhere
My breaths are deep and fruitless
a forced inhale and haggard exhale—
shabby, tired, breaking

something about this is just like the last

when we were suspended above it all,
the pinpoints of trees dotted at our feet
we were weightless and laughing,
always laughing,
our voices flitting about the sky and
echoing forward into our sun-striped future but

then the storm came,
and the branches bent beneath it all,
the trees crashed the mess of it
hulking giants tripping bloody on the floor of the world
and the stars got punched out,
until we were smattered in this darkness

up close, it's all charred and broken
it's all hard to carry
it's all sinking slowly

it's just like the last
it's always too heavy
and only here
are my arms too frail
too weak
to carry
the things that we left

Mirrors

The tension between vanity & insecurity
Suspended questions of self hanging in ceiling-cracks,
the refrigerator, the gardener, the roads
humming along, while my crinkled knuckles tighten
at the foot of a full-length mirror

On The Nature of Ghosts and The Magnificence of Hope

There are always the smiles that stay with us
longer than we would like —
teeth, teeth, and teeth,
once incisor, now fang
waiting to tear at the fragility of me
to bite and taste the saltiness of all my parched parts

but then, a bursting light of You,
and I remember the ways You made these gears fit,
the way You took your divine sculptor's knife and chisel
to chip away at all the corrupt things
and find the image you hid, long ago

Oh! The corrosion! The filth!
No wonder it is taking so long!
In the face of Your mighty hands,
my feeble fingers insist on clinging to my old self
often
Give it back! I know nothing else!
and most importantly,
Who will I be once it is all gone?
Who will I be without my old skin?

You smile, and call,
All you must do is allow me to show you.

Fragmented

Where the pieces of me end
and the fragments of you begin
there is the slightest crack,
the smallest, hairline fracture,
but still — a gap

housing loose strands of
my selfishness and
your confusion
and my insecurities
and your arrogance
all hanging together like
wiry hairs that do not know
where they were born

I am this:
espresso cubano, 2 shots,
hiding behind steam & sugar
You are:
red eye — hot & straight up,
and while I have always preferred black coffee
these days, I find my limbs extending into
past refrigerators, rummaging aimlessly
for the half-and-half [french vanilla]

my weakness is hulking
an infinite bulge of mismatched socks and
mirror shards buried under tarpaulin and dust
and I am sorry it's so messy,
and that I have lost the keys to everything,
and that all the plants are unwatered,
and that the wine stains just won't come out,
and that my hands have forgotten how to clench into
the fists they once knew
and that my eyes keep leaking and leaking,
and my lips have lost their blueprints for
building words that make my heart make sense again,
and that I am not strong enough to carry both my weakness and yours,
I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry.

Mea culpa, Mea culpa

I don't do much, sometimes
I don't lose sleep
I don't always bring home piles of papers
to grade
I don't call all 130 sets of parents, always
I should,
I should I should I should.

If I am asking them to work their hardest,
then I need to be working mine.

Despite not losing sleep, I'm still tired
and I don't know
I don't know how to care a lot
without caring too much
without being frustrated and hurt
when they don't care in return
I don't know why I don't work harder,
but I should,
I should I should I should.

If I am asking them to work their hardest,
then I need to be working mine.

I've heard sage wisdom, of protecting oneself from burnout,
of striving for sanity for sustainability,
but I think I have
spent so much of me
building walls of "sustainability"
that I can't see past
the burning brick.

I guess I could be working harder.

(I wish I wanted to. I should I should I should.)