Friday

I wrote this in February, which was probably the darkest and most difficult month of my first year. You'll see why.

*I have changed students' names to protect their privacy.

Friday

11 a.m., Friday
My phone vibrates
“Message”
About West Village
Dinner plans
I smile

Soft knock at my door
“Come in!”
“Hi, Ms. Brady, I am here
To make up the quiz,”
Anna Matos says through a smile
From ear-to-ear

With that toothy grin
The chaos of 3rd period washes
Under the cracks between the window and frame
Into the gray world outside
Into the highway traffic moving
Angrily and urgently and blindly
Into the uncertain distance

“Here, Anna, you’ll ace this.”

With the hand-off
My mind flashes back to 2nd period-

A lesson on
Spoken Word poetry
Rhythm, rhyme, repetition
Taylor Mali
Gemineye
Oveous Maximus
Nikki Giovanni
The power of words

Anna Matos, sitting two desks back
Fourth row
Stares out the windows
Through glazy
Empty
Wide
Brown eyes
Stoic
Unaffected by their words
Unmoved by calls for change
With each word, rhyme,
She drifts farther and farther
From reality
From her desk
She is somewhere else
So far from here-

In five minutes- no more- she hands
It back, confidently
“100?”
“Yep!” the smile masks her
Pain

“Anna, is everything OK? I
noticed you were a little down earlier”

She hesitates.

“Yea, Ms. Brady I am fine, really.”

“Are you sure?”
(I remember my own
high school days- evading teachers’
seldom attempts to reach out…)

“Actually. No, I’m not OK.”

In the next five minutes,
She pours out her heavy heart
All through a smile
A mask
A brilliant facade
An attempt to stay strong.
“Dad almost died...
Train accident…
Stroke…
Staples in his skull…
Detectives think …
Suicide attempt…
Can’t remember anything…
Doctors think
It’s a miracle…
He.
Didn’t.
Remember.
Me.”
Her words fade

And all I want to do is
Hug her and tell her she’ll be OK…
Someday.

My own spoken words seem
So infuriatingly empty
“I am so sorry” seems
To cruelly mock her sadness

She is 14.
She leaves.
Her smile seared
Into my muddled mind

I sit at a desk
Dinner plans long forgotten
Memories of my students’ pain
Expressed through their written words
Flash through my mind-

Juan, 7, watches his father murdered
Caroline loses friends to gang violence
Ruths’s brother shot and killed
Erica’s friend murdered- wrong place, wrong time
The list goes on and on…
And on and on…

Never again
Can I look at the world
Through blind eyes

I gaze outside-
Through glossy eyes
Through the
Windows obscured
By dirt and grime
And pain
And lost loved ones
And long forgotten memories
Of childhood innocence-
Into the gray
Mess moving so quickly, too quickly by

I take a breath
Close my eyes
In a valiant attempt
To escape the realities
Of a cruel world
Outside

I only hope
They can escape, too.