Dear Student,

Sometimes words fail, and you just need a poem to put words to what can't be said.

With gratitude to these two students, and all of the others, from whom I learned so much this week.



Dear Student,

There you are
to my left,
and you are crying.

Fat, round tears slipping down your cheek
from beneath your glasses
and you can't hide it
and you won't hide it.

And you shouldn't.
You are brave.

And we hear you now
in your hurting.

"I'm sorry,"
you whimper.
"I've never cried
about a book before."

And we are all crying,
but none of us have tears
like yours.

Your neighbor rubs your shoulder.
Everyone is with you,
together in your tears.



Dear Student,

You and I had never met,
and yet
there we sat,
in your kitchen,

that deadly blinking cursor
on a white screen
beckoning you to write what was on your heart.

"A college essay?" you ask.
And this is how they'll judge me?"

"Just make them feel something."
It doesn't have to be everything.
Just a glimpse. Don't tell them who you are...
show them."

And you do.

You take a tomb full of broken ideas
and biographical pain
and gnarled genealogy
and you make magic of the cracked mirrors.

Hours later, your mother tells me
that you knelt,
empowered by the truth of those mirrors,
alongside a teammate
before a game,
shuddering under the weight
of a world of eyes,
a cracked mirror in a sea of lies.

And in that kneeling,
you are winning:
winning a game
where no one loses.