LESSONS LEARNT

My hands, laid out in front of me, have failed me countless times. 

They reach out for clouds and end up with dust bunnies

They dance off tune

I end up with fallen objects and crocked lines

I stumble upon memories 

Dust them off to a laptop 

with a battery that drained twice already, 

but binge watching tv series won’t make the fact that you are not here, any easier. 

So I dance to the symphony of the raindrops 

hybrid with that of the leafs moving back and forth, 

swaying with wind. 

Speaking of the wind, 

My high school principle used to say, 

“Girls should be like the wind, you can feel it, but you cannot see it.”

She would repeat this phrase to an all girls high school

Years later, I still don’t get it

Was she teaching us to be invisible? 

To be nothing more than a sensation of an existence, 

an almost but not quite

To be doubtful

To be out of sight

To be the forgotten letters in my middle school dictations 

See, I’d get a C in dictation 

my mother would tell me

 “Stop eating the letters.” 

The word harassment sounds like too many S s, 

And I sometimes still cannot spell misogyny quite right

but I learnt what they meant long before I knew how spell ‘em 

I learnt the men’s rhymes on the streets, 

the catcalling forming a beat, 

hands reaching for body parts 

that have long been labeled “private”. 

Does it matter how you spell something? 

If its meaning is carved on the inside of your bleeding fists

If it is drenched in trembles and weakened limbs

Spelling Pretty won’t make me feel it

Won’t erase the memory of nine year old me

Wondering if she could bleach her skin white.

Purposely staying in the shade

Avoiding the embrace of the sun

Wondering if she could be closer

 To the shade of pretty she saw her hometown describe? 

Those stale lessons were the ones that stayed

I’m not nine anymore

Still learning lessons. 

Still finding new tastes of disappointment, 

Like that of my three-year-old cousin teaching me, 

That orange is only for boys. 

At least when I was a kid, it was only blue. Now they’ve got orange too? 

Okay so here’s what I do

I hold her hand 

And tell her, we are as colorful as the rainbow,

I tell her look around you, 

We can paint with any color we choose to, 

I tell her to embrace all the shades this earth comes in. 

But her attention span was long gone

Leaving me with the bitterness of disappointment on my tongue

There is so much left to learn,

To teach, 

To become. 

I am still trying 

To come up with games, with books, with concepts, with stories, 

So that my kids 

Don’t learn the lessons I did. 

So that school yard bullies don’t teach them their brown skin is broken, 

So they do not wish to 

Undress it nor color it white, 

So they’re not ten and worrying about their weight, 

So they don’t suffer the same fate,

But, How do I stop them from learning those lessons?

How do I teach them, better ones? 

How do I teach them that Pretty, is a one size fits all, 

It stretches and bends and shrinks and grows, as they do,

It comes in all shades and all kinds of sparkle. 

How do I teach my boys that the purple in the night sky is the color of their soul, 

How do I teach my girls the orange of the sun in their paintings is almost the color of the fire in their soul. 

That they are whoever they choose to be

That they are not made of flesh

They’re made of daydreams 

They’re made of the scent of heaven

I’ll teach them that my weakened hands 

Will never fail to embrace them 

Never fail to hold their mistakes and lost hopes

Stitch them together into a stardust bedcover 

Wrap them in it

And keep them warm