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Monica Fuglei
On the first day of our nonfiction unit
We talk ideas big and small: homes and hearts
broken or mended, we speak of men whose eyes
rest too long, of school shooting lock down drills
we didn’t know were drills.
From the back she speaks of paint samples:
the expense of each, of how hard it is to choose,
how her home’s light differs from the store,
of how small a thing that is next to the others.
I tell her it’s not. How human it is to want
our space to be perfect. How human it is to nest.
To build ourselves something from white walls
and a set of keys. How over time home blossoms
into our imaginings.
My students bond. They trade numbers
and stories. Offer support. Offer love. We make things,
together. Some kind of life. Not fiction.