loss

The Blaring Results Of…

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

The fire alarm went off just after the minute bell, thirty seconds before finals were to start. I had already arrived early enough to stand in line and sign out my district final. I had taken the time to organize them name by name on every other desk, ready for the students to walk in, find their place, and write their best essay of this semester.

When the alarm blared into our ears, I told the kids what door to walk out. I grabbed my coat, ready to wrap some warmth around this December Monday. I locked my classroom door, thinking about the security of the tests.

And I entered the line. The students-ready-to-give-up line. The teachers-wondering-if-there’d-be-enough-time-now-for-finals line.

And in their arms, like infants ready to suckle? Tight against their chests like their lives depended upon the survival of a few stacks of lined booklets?

Their district finals.

“Where are your tests? Did you leave them in your room??”

Like I had committed a cardinal sin.

And this moment, more than any other, is why I think our society has completely fallen apart. No way our school, our city, our fire department would plan a fire drill the Monday morning moment before finals would begin.

So this could be REAL. We could be walking out of our school into a bitter cold standstill for hours as we wait for the beautiful firemen to rush five blocks in their blaring white truck to SAVE OUR LIVES.

And I left, God forbid, the tests in that damn room.

(Of course it was an error. Of course they were doing construction in the gym that set off the alarm. Of course they adjusted our schedule, making the day twenty minutes longer than planned, cutting into our lunch, our grading time, our collection of children from school, forcing us to stand in line again, forcing our children to stand like common prostitutes on the corner because their mother couldn’t arrive on time, all because of the security of that damn test.)

Of course I’ll give up my planning period tomorrow to catch up.

But I will not carry that test like it’s my baby. I have enough babies. Three of my own and thousands more. Their words are worth more than what the district (the society) asked them to write in sixty minutes. Their lives are worth more than the security of this test.

Our lives are worth more than the security of a TEST.

Someday, I hope, we will realize this.

Books and Love

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On the drive home, we are missing our carpool companions thanks to the relentless militarism of their middle school, and I take advantage of this moment to hop skip and jump just shy of downtown.

Me: “We all need books. This is the only library in the city that has Spanish ones.”

I: “I’m only reading this one.”

R: “That’s MY book borrowed from MY teacher that YOU stole.”

Me: “There are 100,000 books here. Can’t you choose a different one?”

Both: “Not until she gives me that one.”

I give up. I take four escalators to the top floor of the library in the center of the city, the epicenter of the Latino world, where I stare down four shelves of outdated, bindings-falling-off Spanish books, trying to find one that is 1) at my level 2) not a hundred years old 3) interesting. What a bunch of bullshit this is. ¡No me jodas!

We ride home in silence. Semi-silence. They read. I listen to La Busca de Felicydad while R groans about my Spanish audiobooks. We sit in traffic and I miss the turn because I’m listening to how a small fatherless black boy has to witness his stepfather beating the shit out of his poor mother whose education was denied by her father so her brother could go to school and I am thinking about how fucking entitled my white children are and how unentitled my refugee students are who learn the new vocabulary phrase, “take it off” and all the girls write, for their “demonstration of knowledge” sentence, “As soon as I get home, I take off my hijab.” Like it’s a burden, a weight, a freedom they wait all day to release, and my own kids are fighting over a damn book.

But bless them all the same. For loving to read. For fighting over a damn book.

And this is America, I think, as we drive past the wealthiest mall with its block of Christmas-lit trees. As R settles into her hopeful view of the book I will leave for her. As I will rise and teach tomorrow, perhaps a new phrase such as, “What gives us hope?” And they will post pictures of their childhood in the refugee camp and my girls will ask me to read them a story (because they’re never too old) and I will drive the carpool home and hope for a better America. One without militarism. Without fear.

With books and love. Books and love. Where we can all learn what it means to “take it off.”

To find a Spanish book on the fourth floor of the library. To read. To give in to sisterly needs. To remember that we are all refugees.

That we all seek shelter. In a book. A drive. A removal of a hijab.

In each other’s arms.

In Comparison

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midnight wake up call
 evaluation nightmares
 (scores that don’t suit me)
 
 early morning grades
 rush to school to hide from kids
 and try to catch up
 
 small knock at entry:
 “Teacher, may I please enter?”
 (a small scared boy waits)
 
 “Are you new today?”
 and his brother trails behind
 with soft pink gloves on
 
 “From Uganda, yes.”
 my papers sit in piles
 forgotten on desk
 
 i show them downstairs
 where free breakfast awaits them:
 eyes big and grateful
 
 “What brings you here, boys?”
 they exchange frightened glances.
 “For a better life.”
 
 ungraded papers,
 nightmares–they’re all meaningless
 in comparison
 
 at least they are here–
 where with beauty they’ll begin
 the life we all want
 
 

Friday Night Lights

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what angers me now
 is her quick accusation
 that we just don’t care
 
 bullied confessions
 took control of my first class
 (undocumented)
 
 yet, she’s tracking us–
 collecting district data
 to prove we’re worth it
 
 you cannot track kids
 who’ve been shoved into lockers
 with tablet data
 
 one day she’ll see this
 or continue on her path
 of domination
 
 either way, we win:
 My lesson’s lost, i tell them
 —but we needed this—
 
 i actually hear
 the harsh words they say to me
 i truly listen
 
 but she can’t see that
 it’s not in her statistics
 and therefore i fail
 
 what angers me most
 is how i love, love, love them
 and how she doesn’t

Neither Here Nor There

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rain-forced overtime
 and a club cancellation
 poured on my evening
 
 frazzled two incomes
 shuffle life like laundry loads:
 nothing’s ever clean
 
 quick pasta in pan
 (middle one waits for boil)
 i mad-dash the town
 
 make my appointment
 where my essay’s dissected
 by native speaker
 
 who can’t tell me why
 subjunctive is needed here
 yet, not here (nor there)
 
 disgruntled, i sit
 choose the last row, and listen–
 same two birds chirping
 
 pecking the rest out
 our Spanish words now swallowed
 by extroversion
 
 and i can’t do it
 i cannot sit in this class
 with my girls at home
 
 i can’t speak Spanish
 or use subjunctive bullshit
 —just say what it is—
 
 it’s like our lunch talk:
 Midwest culture won’t allow
 taking last cookie
 
 and if you offer,
 offer three times before, ‘Yes’
 (no cookie for me)
 
 so i leave the class
 i walk out, i give up, lose
 (win time with my girls
 
 who ask for reading
 aloud, in poems stories,
 mine and theirs and ours)
 
 and we read Spain poems
 remember Gaudí’s madness
 in place of our own
 
 and that’s my Thursday
 just like any other: lost,
 but not forgotten

My Friday Night

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a red solo cup
 atop a stack of boxes
 life is moving on
 
 

Dawning

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with the house half packed
 my morning commute haunts me
 no more sunrise walks
 
 

Leaves

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stomach tumbling
 with sick realization:
 innocence now lost
 
 just three days ago
 she was climbing up the limbs
 of youth’s bulging tree
 
 her arms strong and thin
 (but what was bulging inside,
 ready to burst free?)
 
 to know that she knows
 kills me from the inside out
 (as a mom, a slave)
 
 failures drop like leaves
 of youth’s impending autumn
 to crunch with my woes
 
 i’ve always loved leaves
 (but there’s no satisfaction
 in this kind of crunch.)
 
 she searches hollows
 to fill a hollow within
 (i’ve searched too. in vain.)
 
 to know that she knows
 brings every dark doubt to light
 (no tree-limbed safe-net)
 
 what will she climb next?
 (the strong arms of a stranger
 who will leave no leaves…)
 
 a mom’s greatest fear:
 to lose children to branches
 that i cannot reach
 
 

Hatched

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first day of too old
 can’t believe how big they’ve grown
 so far from our shell
 
 yes, they’ve broken free
 walk out into the world
 chick fluff gone with grins
 
 

Problem Solving

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she wants an answer
 and i want a solution:
 not an easy mix
 
 i stare at Wash Park
 paddles, crayfish everywhere
 and think of that day
 
 when we were problems
 we were each other’s problems
 and that was okay
 
 she’d never been there
 and we pedaled that huge bike
 each one disabled
 
 we ate what we ate
 we chewed what we chewed: bitter
 yet: so fucking sweet
 
 and why i hate now:
 because i have everything
 (nothing without her)
 
 money doesn’t buy
 that once-in-a-lifetime love
 trapped inside boxes
 
 so what’s my answer?
 there’s no easy solution
 to a broken heart
 
 but let us fix it
 pedal away from Wash Park
 be wholly ourselves