Jun Is Not Here Anymore
Jun is not here anymore,
and we all realized that
after guidance left,
having told us he was dead,
had died, but there was no more news than that.
When I shut the door and asked
my students if they wanted to say
anything because I really couldn’t
and I cried, openly, in front of them,
Justin raised his hand,
“Can we leave his seat,
I mean can we put things on his desk;
well can no one sit there?”
“Yes Justin.”
Being Black in Brooklyn Tech
is a new hashtag active live now
and I decided to bring up racism
in class. I was quite totalitarian about it:
if you are not black, you do not get to tell
another black person how to feel about the N
word. “But, Ms. R…”
“Nope. Not entertaining your rebuttals right now.”
And thinking,
“Shut up little white boy.”
And that inner thought is enough to get me fired.
And maybe it should be the start to my walking papers,
but I really don’t think so.
I really think sometimes you don’t get to say how you feel about something because how someone else feels about it is more important than how you are feeling.
And I think it is okay to teach kids that.
I also do syntax, diction, tone, and elements of form.
That was before I found out Jun died,
and I wonder what his nature poem
was about, the one I assigned the students
to write over Christmas break,
(there I go again forgetting
it isn’t Christmas to most of my students
and that might make them feel really shitty
and wish I had said winter break)
modeled after Wordsworth’s
“The World is Too Much With Us Late and Soon.”
I really wish I had gotten a chance to read that:
Jun’s attempts at iambic pentameter.
(Jun’s words of iambic pentameter).
And then I noticed,
(going back to after Justin asked
if we could memorialize space)
Amy, in deep purple,
looking anxious and like I have never seen her look before,
on the brink of something
and the bell was ringing
and I asked her to come see me.
She did.
I asked her, “What is wrong?”
She cried and heaved and shook her head no.
I said, just give me a clue:
Jun, family, school, stress, you?
“My sister killed herself three years ago and I don’t know how to handle it.”
And I didn’t either,
but I hugged her,
(I’m not supposed to do that)
and then I let her cry for a really long time.
And then we went to see guidance.
And then it was time for me to go back
to my classroom
and pack up for the day.
And that all happened today.
And I am not lying,
and I have a very heavy heart,
as the night is settling in on today,
which is the Epiphany,
All King’s Day,
the Gifts of the Magi:
please come wise ones
from the place so many of us Westerners least expect it:
the Middle East.
We’re hope-filled and ready in a small room in Brooklyn
ready to read and hurt and bent and trying.
So there is that.
There is still that.