School

These days, just before dawn, I find myself
asking mom if I can stay home from school.
I teach school now and mom is dead, but
when I was a kid and said I didn’t want to go,
she wouldn’t make me. She’d pass a cool palm
over my forehead and get on with her day.
Sometimes we’d nap together, but mostly she
went to her job and I’d be alone all day.
I don’t remember what I did, and she never
once asked me, never once asked why
I wanted to stay home, and so I didn’t ask
myself. She must have trusted me, or not
much cared, which may be trust’s result.
I stayed home because some days it felt
perilous to be seen, and other days it felt
perilous not to be, and these mornings it is
so much both that I do not tell my students
or family because I think they must trust me,
and because I think they don’t much care
whether I’m alone all day with them or not.



From Bad Hobby (Milkweed, 2022). All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.