Ode to Elaine Duran

by KB Brookins

Fort Worth TX, 2009

How would I have survived high school 

without your run-down white-bricked classroom? 

Hyena-laughing Black woman fluent 

in Spanglish, poetry, & gossip. Her plastic ID

dangled as she said to me, I see you 

after I spent the whole day erased. 

I went to every period begging to keep 

my hoodie on. My hair — 

bumped and crimped as if this 

convinced passersby I was some kind of girl. 

Ms. D was the only teacher who kept me 

glued to my body. My hoodie stayed on

as she quipped about clothes not equalling 

the whit we’d gain if we came to her room 

after school. My head, now littered with locs, 

stands high as I type to the unwritten 

sky, hoping she knows she changed

my life, & her laugh— unlanguaged

& unbound — still rings

in the way I’ll always miss. 

I hope she recognizes me, the kid

in her AP Spanish class who had to be 

coerced into speaking, 

then joined the after-school poetry society 

at the request of my friends. 

Now I speak her name in crowded rooms

& conjure language like it’s mine. 

I honor the safe space she built every time 

I deny my own demise.