Ms. Um Makes an Announcement to the student who spies me at Target By Kristin Kovacic
I am not Ms. Um, though I understand my name has vanished from the screen of your mind— You are confused, because for once I am not talking. I am trying to restore the quiet girl in me who writes poems on her palms and cradles them in fists, and sleeps while the poems dream under her chin. I am not thrilled to encounter you, either, RachelKatyMegan, but I do recognize you, unmistakable as my own child, adrift in the Hair Care aisle. I don‘t want to talk, I want to tell you something clean and natural,
going home to read your poem. I am thinking about possibilities for dinner, redemption, hair color; I am writing dirty words on the wall of my skull. I am hoping this tiny washer will do the trick, at last, that my children will touch me with tenderness once again. I am afraid of the Value-Sized Antacids in my cart, I am terribly afraid I have forgotten something important, and I am somehow afraid I‘m not who I set out to be, but I am not exactly sure who that was.
and this is the wish I‘m pushing around, avoiding confrontations with the obvious: I am not certain.
I am not talking, though I may be muttering, I‘m not hiding, but I may be wearing the nastiest sweatshirt you‘ve ever seen, and there‘s a moment we could both turn our faces toward the shining shelves and feign distraction—but we don‘t. You see me and I see you
I am not unaware of my storybook power, of your made-for-tv titters behind my back. I am not
here, bright and blinking in this Big Box of light, trying to recall our names.