Sage Mitchell

Abecedarian on Things Big & Small

All I know is what I give every day.
Before the election, I was already spinning out. For weeks, I’ve been
coming to class
dried out of dreams
eager to find a way to undo my clenched
fist. There’s this old saying
“Give them the right questions, not the right answers.” It’s been getting
harder to want to pour more into what is overflowing.
I see the way the world is changing, how even the catastrophes
just roll off their backs. In my worst moments, I want to return to madness:
kids flipping desks, refusing to comply. I want to say
look, look, look! Are you looking? Didn’t I teach you to look?
My time in this role is limited, it’s become clearer
now that what I teach is a distraction. Yet,
only I know how I feel. I keep my curriculum’s
promise. It won’t be me who
quits; it will be the country that quits on me. After the
relentless strangers have found their place in the firing squad &
suddenly, transness: a wound. I’m forced to go
tend to my healing.
Unlike what they think, I have slowed way down.
Vowed to love what’s in front of me, to
walk into the woods when the grief has led me to forget
xylem & what it’s taught me. Nature will remind
you that it’s possible to filter out what wants you dead. There is no
zero. Things grow where the light hits the earth.