Your Words

A few days after she was born, my mother held Mythili in her arms, Mythili with her ever-open eyes, her neck craning for me or for another look at the world, and my mother said to me, “This one has been here before. She has lived another life.”

Without the spiritual background that is ever-present in so many lives, but not our life, I was surprised by these words from my mother, a second-time grandmother with her second-born granddaughter. But not shock-surprised. Just surprised. And yet, I knew she was right. Mythili had a presence about her from the moment she entered the world, an energy, an awareness of her environment that was never so obvious in my other two girls.

Mythili looked around at the world and immediately questioned it, even from birth. Where’s the milk? (Colostrum delays). Where’s my sister? Where’s my Daddy? Most importantly, Where’s my Mama? She observed, dissatisfied, her mostly-immovable state.

“You have one of those babies who hates being a baby,” the midwife told me at our six-week checkup. “Once she can sit up at about six months, you’ll see a total change in her.”

Mythili, who craned her neck from birth to search for a view of whoever was walking into the room, knew that her surroundings, and the people within them, meant everything in the world to her.

And you asking her to do this meant everything in the world to me.

I know it was you because I searched the crowd after, my face stained in tears, my hands still shaking, my heart still leaping with pride and disbelief. I found her counselor who told me it was your idea, your encouragement, your words that convinced her.

And it was only a moment out of a thousand moments in my daughter’s life. My daughter’s life that has been filled with happy memories and tainted with sadness these past few years. My daughter, who attended the high school where I teach, where I’m given the privilege of seeing one set of graduates after another pass through this gym before the ceremony. My daughter, who was hiding, sitting by herself at the top of the bleachers, all of her Class of 2023 friends gone, chatting amongst themselves, because of grief, loss, rivalry, meanness, jealousy, bitterness… death. My daughter who took this selfie with me but kept the speech a secret.

My daughter, who during the COVID lockdown, when one of her beautiful art pieces was being featured on the school TV show, couldn’t be convinced, not with note cards, not with me filming an example, not with any words, to record a 20-second video to describe her talent and inspiration.

My daughter took your words and put them into her heart, stood upon the stage in front of a thousand people, and honored me, honored the friend she lost, and most importantly, honored herself.

For a decade I have watched my students, my refugees and immigrants, enter this stage and share their 15-second speeches about how Denver South helped them form a new life in America. I have watched as struggling American students, those lost in the crowd, those never-valedictorians, those never-heard-of students, had a moment of glory.

And I can never thank you enough for giving me this moment of glory in my daughter’s life. For giving her your words so that she could find her own.

Thank you for giving my daughter her words with your words. Thank you for giving me this moment with your words.

Scene Five from a Marriage

scene five from a marriage:
a broken spring equals a broken toaster
but not just any toaster
my bake-everything toaster
my savior to a shitty oven
my air fryer
my baker of brownies and pies
my upper-class kitchen in my middle-class house

i asked if he *thought*
it could be opened up and fixed
and before i’d moved the laundry
from the washer to the dryer,
he had the drill out.

you’ll never find this
i want to tell the world
my daughters
my soul at age nineteen when he walked
so uncertainly
into Pete’s Kitchen

but i did.
i found the man who’d drill a toaster
on a hellish Thursday
a Thursday dripping with tears and self-doubt

just another scene
from a marriage that works.

Scene Three from a Marriage (Love Yolk)

Here I am at home,

and he tells me not to take a pic,

that “it’s only an egg”

though a moment ago he said,

“we better move her or she’ll overcook”

and like precious cargo

he slides her onto the plate

still in his uniform

at the end of a long day.

a long day for a teacher–

for a human–

he sent me a text three-quarters into third period,

almost lunch.

“Two staff members shot at East High.”

three miles from my school

three million bullets into my heart

three months into 2023.

it’s only an egg.

it’s only a threat.

it’s only a gun.

so carefully, he cooks the sausage

(in a separate pan ’cause I won’t eat it)

Scene Three from a Marriage.

the marriage he allows me

where I can take this pic against protests

and write a poem that’s not a haiku

and wrap my arms in the love

that the boy with the gun didn’t have.

and only you,

you standing there tomorrow morning with me,

in front of my Newcomers,

in front of this American high school,

can feel that love bleeding through

through

through–

the love for that burst yolk,

that perfect yellow yolk–

the love the boy with the gun didn’t have.

Bites and Pieces

There isn’t a photo today, unless my mantra-cup, “Bless This Hot Mess” can be my actual mantra. There is a meal, a beautiful meal that New York Times Cooking thinks a regular person can make in forty-five minutes. A meal that involves chopping then roasting cashews, skinning then mincing fresh ginger, garlic, chopping a bell pepper into bits, washing rice, slicing two-inch sections of green onions, and preparing cilantro. Also cutting and cooking chicken before the oven part. I don’t have a photo of my youngest and my husband and me, making a mess of this kitchen before I cleaned it, trying to make this meal in forty-five minutes between the three of us.

I just have this. This meal to eat while we listen to and argue about Bruce Springsteen (The BOSS) and discuss our days.

Oh, our days. Bruce was under pressure to change a card (a card as big as a board game and twice as heavy), Rio was under pressure to meet her social and familial weekend obligations, me under the pressure of society to not tell a student’s caseworkers that her foster mother isn’t good enough because.

Because there are no more foster mothers available. Because it isn’t horrible enough that her mother was murdered by the Taliban, and that she’s living in a home that doesn’t recognize or celebrate her culture or speak her language, because she may never see her brothers and father and baby sister again.

It isn’t enough. It is never enough. The crying, the screaming, the desire to be perfect, the accusations, the pain that seeps through every word, the trauma that breathes through every breath.

I wish I could just change a too-heavy card, or balance my sleepover with my obligation to my grandparents, or just be a kid or just be a human who doesn’t have to carry the weight of all these humans.

But I can’t. I can’t cook this meal in forty-five minutes, NYT Cooking, and you should stop lying to people. You can’t bring your mother back, and you should stop lying to people. You shouldn’t make false accusations, and you should stop lying to people.

People who could lose their jobs, their lives, and all the love they’ve given in twenty years of carrying the weight of these kids. People who put on a musical rehearsal of Beauty and the Beast just so my poor kids could see it. People who spend half of their summer taking your kids to every place they could ever imagine because they couldn’t see those places otherwise. People who love your kids as fiercely as you do and for some reason you can’t see it,

You can’t see me.

What does it mean to be a teacher in the twenty-first century? It carries a weight that you can’t imagine carrying because nothing, nothing is more enticing than a 24/7 entertainment device that every kid carries in their pocket. Nothing is more enduring than teenage love or parental defense. Nothing matters more than a grade. Nothing compares to the TikTok video or Instagram caption–not a cultural connection, a passion for language, or a pile of free clothes.

It is like this meal. Sticky rice coconut chicken. It has everything: cilantro, ginger, coconut milk, basmati rice, a yellow bell pepper, garlic minced to perfection, chicken broth, scallions, hot sauce, a dutch oven pan that fits into the best-ever toaster oven, a bubbling bite with perfect spice… Everything.

But it’s a lie. It’s not a Wednesday night meal. It does not take forty-five minutes to prepare.

It takes years, twenty years of patience and a pinch of forgiveness to make this possible.

And you can taste it in every bite. Every bite that you put in your mouth and every bite that bites you back.

Taste it. The creamy coconut, the sriracha, the beauty of the world swirling in the rice.

And bite back.