He stands with a weight in his hands,
Trying to show me he’s a man.
Asks if I work out,
I reply “Not much.”
Says he can tell I do sometimes,
Tells me he does too.
He wants to get really big,
Bigger than me, obviously,
More like some of the people he’s seen on TV.
He has a crooked tooth,
And a face that shows he’s still well within his youth.
And just began to see men who do
What he wants to do.
Men who lift weights
Because they don’t work all day,
Slaving away,
Building muscle because they have to be strong
To make a living wage.
But his goal seems somewhat unstable
Like he’s not sure if he’s able
To look like these new heroes.
Partly, he’s right.
He doesn’t look all too imposing
Built more for agility than might.
But in this new world, there is so much
One can be.
It seems unrealistic
To think realistically.
So he lifts the weight
And I’m sure he’ll grow strong as an ox.
He’s spent to long elsewhere
To not know what he’s got,
Here, among dumbbells and a bench,
Where men and women worry
About not being skinny enough.
Because, in the end, for most,
It’s not so tough to fill their stomachs up.
To complain about being too stuffed.
And to look to a television screen
And see the actors muscular and lean.
And think,
“That could be me.”
Our dreams are about better clothes and more money
And very rarely nightmarish memories
Of running and screaming.
Of fleeing our home countries
Barely understanding the reasons
To live somewhere else where people have the freedom
To be pigs,
To get big,
To be anything,
Or at least to stand,
Looking at the man on TV,
Lifting a weight,
And imagine how grand
It would be to be that way.
I sit at a desk.
This girl seems more on task than all the rest.
They filter through Facebook feeds,
And play online computer games,
Amazing, teenagers seem to all have the same needs.
But not her, with curly short hair.
She’s not there to simply stare
At a computer screen and pretend she doesn’t care
About her future.
She’s playing catch up
And the game is rigged against her.
And the problems on her paper
Are harder than I can ever remember math being.
So she and I sit at the desk and frown.
Computer games and status updates all around.
And a roar of laughter,
Yet the most deafening sound
Is the silence
Of not knowing what that equation meant.
So we skip that problem,
Try our hand at some others
To see if two minds can solve them.
It seems like a teenager
Should never have to do this complex math
But until she gets her grade up,
It’s all that lies in her path.
I realize, sitting there,
That I never had to work this hard.
She only understands
Every other word I say
Well enough to know how to make
Square roots and fractions
Do some unknown action
So that’s why it’s taking
So long.
She has to learn how to survive,
Live life,
Get by
In a world that is not her own.
And at the same time, somehow also grow
Into a young lady who knows
Complex arithmetic.
I wish I could just lift her up
Give her just a bit of the privilege
I grew up with.
A grandmother who taught me subtraction
When I could barely walk.
In a country where my parents talked
In the same language I heard
On the streets.
At the store.
In my school.
I want nothing more than to make it easier
For her to just be her.
Because she puts in more effort
Than I ever considered.
My success has never felt so undeserved.
But that’s what you realize among the underserved.
This isn’t fair,
For the girl with the short hair
Frowning next to me in her chair.
We both like to sit on the side of the room
And watch other people.
It’s just one of those things that you do
As you get older.
But, then again, that doesn’t explain her.
Because compared to me,
She’s at least a few years younger.
Still, we sit and we watch.
Me: because I don’t belong.
Her: because she does.
You see, I watch them sing and dance
Some of the older kids try their hand
At a bit of romance.
For me, it’s almost like a study.
It’s opening my eyes to a different way to be.
For her, long frizzy hair under a loose hat,
Of course, it’s just life.
It’s being in a strange place,
But finding somewhere
Where you belong.
People who know your dances and your songs.
Who don’t correct your words
In the fourth language you’ve learned,
Just because you got the tense wrong.
She watches because she sees
More than fun and games.
She sees her home.
She sees herself.
To join in would be
To become too much a part of it
To realize she’s a part of it.
To dance would be to quit being the dancer.
Sing, and she would not be the singer.
So we both sit at the side of the room.
Watching
Laughing
Knowing
That something more is happening here.
Something that, to a passerby,
Would never be clear.
There is brilliance in how freely they move,
Knowing that once they leave the room
There will be a part of them they lose.
They will return to their homes,
Sometimes alone,
To take care of a family of brothers and sisters
Mostly on their own.
Tomorrow, they will return to that scary place
Where they’re judged, not just for their race
But for being unique.
For being extraordinary.
Some may be ostracized,
Because difference in origin is not tolerated
In many high schoolers’ eyes.
But not here.
That’s not what we see.
Here, they are free.
And I know that it means something different to her
Than to me,
But it’s the reason we’ll always sit
On the side of the room
On our own,
Watching,
Smiling,
Knowing
That this place has truly become their home.
