The Poet X(28)
I feel sick the whole day.
Like everyone can see
that the only thing I’m thankful for is Mami’s silence.
Even Twin, who looks at me with his puppy dog face, makes me want to overturn the table, and crush all these mushy peas beneath my heel.
Haiku: The Best Part About Thanksgiving Was When Mami:
Returned my cell.
Until I remember I’ve
got no one to text.
Rough Draft of Assignment 4—When was the last time you felt free?
I must have been five or six,
because the memory is fuzzy.
But my father had been watching a karate movie on TV,
and my mother was at church,
so there was no one to bother us.
Twin and I tied long-sleeved T-shirts around our heads
and used the bows from my church dresses to tie like karate sashes around our waists.
We thought this made us look like ninjas and we hopped from couch to couch, sliding off the plastic sofa covers but never landing in the “lava.”
(Why were we ninjas in volcanoes? Who knows.) I remember at one point looking up and seeing my mother in the living room doorway— I flung myself at her. There was freedom there, in flying. In believing I’d be caught.
I can’t remember if she did catch me.
But she must have, or wouldn’t I remember falling?
Rough Draft of Assignment 4—When was the last time you felt free?
Maybe the last time I was happy saying a poem?
With Aman listening to me, eyes half closed— that moment right before I opened my mouth, when I was nervous and my heart thumped fast, but I knew I could do it anyway, that I could say something, anything, in this moment and someone was going to listen.
Rough Draft of Assignment 4—When was the last time you felt free?
Can a stoop be a place of freedom?
I feel like any time I sat on a stoop I could just watch the world
without it watching me too closely.
Over the summer, it feels like years ago, the downstairs stoop was a playground.
It was a moment when I could breathe without anyone asking me to do or be anything other than what I was:
a girl, an almost woman, sitting
in the sunshine and enjoying the warmth.
Dudes don’t bother you too much
when you’re sitting on your own apartment stoop.
When I sat on the stoop with the boy I thought really cared for me there was freedom then, too.
In the ways our bodies leaned toward each other, in the fact that I finally let myself be reckless.
There is freedom in coming and going for no other reason than because you can.
There is freedom in choosing to sit and be still when everything is always telling you to move, move fast.
Final Draft of Assignment 4 (What I Actually Turn In)
Xiomara Batista Tuesday, December 4
Ms. Galiano
Last Time You Felt Free, Final Draft Freedom is a complicated word. I’ve never been imprisoned like Nelson Mandela or some people I grew up with. I’ve never been encaged like a Rottweiler used for dogfights, or like the roosters my parents grew up tending. Freedom seems like such a big word. Something too big; maybe like a skyscraper I’ve glimpsed from the foot of the building but never been invited to climb.
Gone
Even lunch
has now become
another place
I absolutely hate.
A group of boys has started stopping by our quiet table trying to squeeze in next to us
or look at what the girls are drawing.
Or trying to sneak peeks at my notebook.
These are boys
from some of my classes, some even smoke with Aman.
Sometimes the teacher on duty notices.
If it’s Ms. Galiano, I’m safe.
If it’s not, I have to hope it’s another teacher who gives a damn about the quiet girls in the corner.
I can’t afford any more trouble.
So I keep my hands in my lap.
I keep my mouth zippered shut.
And every day
I wish I could
just become
a disappearing act.
Monday, December 10
Zeros
When Ms. Galiano returns Assignment 4
I’m expecting a red zero by my name.
But instead, there’s a note:
Xiomara,
Is everything okay? Let’s talk after class. I’ve noticed your workmanship seems less thoughtful than usual and you failed another quiz. See me.
I try to think of the ways I can sneak out unnoticed.
I have nothing to say
to Ms. Galiano, or anyone else.
I fold the assignment sheet into small, small squares until I can squeeze it like a fortune tightly held in the center of my palm.
Possibilities
Ms. Galiano is sneaky.
Before the bell rings
she calls me to her desk
and asks me to stand with her while she dismisses the other students, and she doesn’t even try to ease into the conversation neither: “What’s going on?
You aren’t submitting assignments, and you’re even quieter than usual.”