I would like to be a teacher
despite the fact that I never want to be a teacher.

All things could fall within my curriculum of wishful thinking and zero
fulfillment, of empty promises and unwritten letters and missing parents.

We all have absences within us, empty spaces where something should be
but never came, or left a long time ago.

This morning’s breakfast, self-love, memories of Disneyland, dead parents,
ex girlfriends and boyfriends, nights lost to blackouts.

We are all sewn together with voids, the missing parts which stitch
the rest of us together.

And I would tell my students—the young children, the angsty teens, the bitter old men—
that absence is always an infinity, an incalculable blank space of nothing.

To say that one person possesses more absence would be incorrect,
all you can say is that some infinities are bigger than other infinities,

But they are all limitless anyway. We all
wake up reluctantly on a Monday morning and feel that empty pit

Deep in the caves of our stomachs, growling softly or loudly
and announcing whatever it is we want most to fill us.

I would turn toward the chalkboard and bow my head and announce sadly
that we will always appreciate most that which is missing from us.

And admit that occasionally I go to bed early in the morning and dream of myself
as a teacup, slowly being filled up with the warm chai of lost love.

I wake up feeling not just sad but cold,
as if there should be a flowing, bubbling warmness within me which isn’t.

“You see class, nothing will teach you the truth quite like
contrast. You will never notice the cold more than when you forget your coat,

And you will never feel more tired than when you get up at 5am on a Monday morning
after the longest night of your life, with a full day of work and class and meetings ahead.”

Perhaps a young man who still has much left to lose will raise his hand one day
and ask, “What makes you so qualified to teach this class?”


And I will say that I am not especially qualified, but just as worthy
as anyone else.

I have walked north on Broadway, watching the shops around me get richer
and brighter, and feeling the emptiness of my bank account with every step.

I have stayed up late on Friday nights, doing nothing but sitting at my desk
and watching my phone out of the corner of my eye, waiting for it to buzz.

I have stood alone in a room full of people, watching smiles and kisses
and sadness and joy while feeling nothing but static.

I have opened up letters from universities and colleges and tasted
the combination of postal glue and bitter chocolate over and over again.

I have walked away from a woman I love, knowing that all the things I shared
with her every day will now never be within my reach.

I have watched the clock beside my bed reflect sunshine, then moonlight,
then sunshine again, all without ever closing my eyelids.

I have slapped my grumbling stomach after leaving the gym, hating myself
for my hunger and my appearance. I can never seem to take care of both.

I have sat down in front of a birthday cake, surrounded by people I love,
and begged my ****** muscles to do anything but frown.

I have held a rickety pocket knife against my forearm, wondering how
I ever felt like a normal person.

I have shouted I love you over the dead body of my father,
unwilling to leave until I received a reply.

And I have written a thousand poems, taken a million deep breaths,
waiting after every one to feel something shift inside me like a closing door.

I’m not interested in whose absence is bigger than whose,
I only care that we learn to see our emptiness in the people around us

And understand that pain is never an isolated incident,
but a universal language, which we all learn to speak whether we want to or not.

Some infinities are bigger than other infinities, but they are all limitless
anyway. We are all endless blackness, surrounded by light.