The Poet X(4)
Caridad recites Bible verses and promotes peace.
I’m ready to finally feel what it’s like to like a boy.
Caridad wants to wait for marriage.
I’m afraid of my mother so I listen to what she says.
Caridad genuinely respects her parents.
I should hate Caridad. She’s all my parents want in a daughter.
She’s everything I could never be.
But Caridad, Twin, and I have known each other since diapers.
We celebrate birthdays together, attended Bible camp sleepovers with each other, spend Christmas Eve at each other’s houses.
She knows me in ways I don’t have to explain.
Can see one of my tantrums coming a mile off, knows when I need her to joke, or when I need to fume, or when I need to be told about myself.
Mostly, Caridad isn’t all extra goody-goody in her judgment.
She knows all about the questions I have, about church, and boys, and Mami.
But she don’t ever tell me I’m wrong.
She just gives me one of her looks,
full of so much charity, and tells me that she knows I’ll figure it all out.
Questions I Have
Without Mami’s Rikers Island Prison–like rules, I don’t know who I would be
when it comes to boys.
It’s so complicated.
For a while now I’ve been having all these feelings.
Noticing boys more than I used to.
And I get all this attention from guys but it’s like a sancocho of emotions.
This stew of mixed-up ingredients:
partly flattered they think I’m attractive, partly scared they’re only interested in my ass and boobs, and a good measure of Mami-will-kill-me fear sprinkled on top.
What if I like a boy too much and become addicted to sex like Iliana from Amsterdam Ave.?
Three kids, no daddy around,
and baby bibs instead of a diploma hanging on her wall.
What if I like a boy too much and he breaks my heart, and I wind up angry and bitter like Mami, walking around always exclaiming how men ain’t shit, even when my father and brother are in the same room?
What if I like a boy too much and none of those things happen . . .
they’re the only scales I have.
How does a girl like me figure out the weight of what it means to love a boy?
Wednesday, September 5
Night before First Day of School
As I lie in bed,
thinking of this new school year, I feel myself
stretching my skin apart.
Even with my Amazon frame, I feel too small for all that’s inside me.
I want to break myself open like an egg smacked hard against an edge.
Teachers always say
that each school year is a new start: but even before this day I think I’ve been beginning.
Thursday, September 6
H.S.
My high school is one of those old-school structures
from the Great Depression days, or something.
Kids come from all five boroughs, and most of us bus or train, although since it’s my zone school, I can walk to it on a nice day.
Chisholm H.S. sits wide and squat, taking up half a block, redbrick and fenced-in courtyard with ball hoops and benches.
It’s not like Twin’s fancy genius school: glass, and futuristic.
This is the typical hood school, and not too long ago
it was considered one of the worst in the city:
gang fights in the morning and drug deals in the classroom.
It’s not like that anymore, but one thing I know for sure is that reputations last longer than the time it takes to make them.
So I walk through metal detectors, and turn my pockets out, and greet security guards by name, and am one of hundreds who every day are sifted like flour through the doors.
And I keep my head down, and I cause no waves.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, this place is a place, neither safe nor unsafe, just a means, just a way to get closer to escape.
Ms. Galiano
Is not what I expected.
Everyone talks about her
like she’s super strict
and always assigning
the toughest homework.
So I expected someone older, a buttoned-up, floppy-haired, suit-wearing teacher,
with glasses sliding down her nose.
Ms. Galiano is young, has on bright colors, and wears her hair naturally curly.
She’s also little—like, for real petite— but carries herself big, know what I mean?
Like she’s used to shouldering her way through any assumptions made about her.
Today, I have her first-period English, and after an hour and fifteen minutes of icebreakers, where we learn one another’s names (Ms. Galiano pronounces mine right on the first try), she gives us our first assignment: “Write about the most impactful day of your life.”
And although it’s the first week of school, and teachers always fake the funk the first week, I have a feeling Ms. Galiano actually wants to know my answer.
Rough Draft of Assignment 1—Write about the most impactful day of your life.
The day my period came, in fifth grade, was just that, the ending of a childhood sentence.