Detainee

today I sat at a table
rectangular in shape
long and wide
with seven white people in power
next to the other person of color at the table

2:37am

I wake up

eyes wide open
body is alert
I sit up

Why did I say that?
What are they thinking?
What should I do?

My friend, Walter, stood about five feet and eight inches tall. He had sparkly warm blue eyes, weathered pink skin, and an electric, infectious smile. His wild eyebrows were often furrowed reflecting his deep thought, worries, and sadness. I met Walter after he was discovered living deep in the wild Northern California mountains.

Woman
Daughter
Sister
Middle-child
Indian
Christian

I was eight years old when Esperanza fell off the swing. In the backyard, she stood on a flimsy piece of wood, rotted from many rains and held together by two strings, rocking her body back and forth. While she reveled in her weightlessness, I sensed impending catastrophe. From my spot safely in the grass, I pleaded with her to stop. Barely hearing my pleas, she rose higher, closer to the sun with each swing. I turned away from her. Bracing myself, I squeezed my eyes shut and covered my ears. She called out to me, determined to show me that if she swung high enough, she could see above the hedges separating our yard from the neighbors, above all the rooftops neatly lining around the cul-de-sac, to somewhere even more distant. Perhaps she even believed that she could reach back in time, back across the ocean, to her childhood in the Philippines. So she swung, higher and higher and higher.

I.
Minutes
into that first class –
two and a half full
decades since she’s done
anything like this –
she has to admit
there is a kind of poetry:
the manipulation of numbers,
a focused search
for the pattern
that will represent it
all.

Illustration by Allie Olivares remains by Abigail Hawk remains to have: in the keep of a sun both fresh and sodden,I wander and witness shivering

“We have to make a full tea set.”

“Okay, okay,” Pooja said. She dug deep into the soil to retrieve our clay. I waited patiently for her to show me her roll-and-bend technique to make the tiny handles for our teacups. We were artists, rolling clay into the tea cups to use for our pretend tea parties. We were hosts. We were sculptors. We were friends. I was her confidante. She told me about the boys who teased her for raising her hand in class. She confessed that she couldn’t wait to get her menses. She told what she thought that was. Her narratives made me feel more. More than six. More than a measly first standard student. When we were together in public, I carried myself taller, like her, chest out, spine straight.