IN Boho

Guerilla dress, white knit bolero, shoebox wedges, mixed tempura bento, and A Cube Called Gotohan, New York: Here

You are not yourself today, he said. Yeah, I said, tired and an argument, it’s this fucking job that burned him out. Ah, he said, And see, someone’s picking on you already. Oh, I puffed, about what? Why you are wearing sandals, that superficial nitpick, he scoffed. It’s called wedges, I said, I fucking hate that shit. Don’t mind them, he laughed, Just insecure, can’t pull off things. Well, I sighed, I’m in PMS mood and I suppose I can always shove one wedge down that throat. He reassured, Don’t mind them, they’re beneath you. I reassured, You shouldn’t mind them, don’t worry I won’t leave. Thank you for being here, he said. I hugged, You’ve felt so alone haven’t you? I’m here now, I’m sorry it took so long, I’m here, I’ll help you. Help them, he said. I nod, I’ll be okay for my session with them after lunch. He laughed, Viva La Revolucion!

Later, he played Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, conducting it with his hands to bowed heads, to move along a test, waiting to check sentences--- the concerto as a timer, I laugh.

He cried after--- happy about how much can be changed in just five days, laughing about crying. He will stay, he said, To record scores of improvement and feedback from the past five days, But go and fix what you have to fix.

I see how he has changed as a teacher: he has cared in the past five days. In this, he learns to be a father and in this I am the childless mother. In this he has been kind to me, nurturing me in the past five days. (A message comes and I think of spinning to Owel and Daria’s flashlights, hesitant to do so without my dance partner Selena.) I think of how those who care cry. Those who care and teach cry while laughing exhausted. I sit inside an empty cube now silent, now just this light in the surrounding darkness, now gone quiet in my head.

And comfort is an urban pirate’s Tuna Carpaccio and Pasta Vongole with the right man and time for words. As for returning to Guerilla: one of those remembered in that cube was a wife battered and betrayed by a husband. Now she is a woman struggling to speak the language she has lived, in this language she’s always heard but never really put to use, to work, to survive---

This is the beginning of her freedom.