Off the Record

Boiling water from the in-cell tap.
Tear the seasoning packet halfway open.
Crumble the noodles by hand.
Wait three minutes.
Eat directly from the bag.
This is dinner. This was always dinner.

A small manila envelope of letters.
The one mug they let me keep — chipped on the rim.
A list of names, in pencil,
of men I told myself I would write to.
The names are still there.
I have written to four.

A way of standing at a doorway —
left foot back, weight slightly forward,
ready to be counted.
I do this in coffee shops now.

A book I started in Monroe and finished
in the apartment my parents rented.
My handwriting in the margins
of the first half. My handwriting,
slightly different, in the second.

Both are mine.

When my mother wrote that she was proud
she wrote it in the same hand
she had used to write my school excuse notes
when I was nine.

I had not noticed, before,
that the handwriting was the same.

I notice now.

I notice the things that were always there
and that I was not, for a long time,
in any kind of shape
to see.

The first thing she taught us
was how to recognize a thought.

Until then I had assumed
thoughts were a kind of weather —
something you stood in
and tried to wait out.

She drew a circle on the board.
She said: this is a thought.
She drew a square. She said: this is a feeling.
She drew an arrow. She said: thoughts cause feelings.
She drew another arrow. She said: feelings cause behaviors.

I had spent thirty-one years
in a country
whose grammar I did not speak.

She handed each of us a piece of paper.
She said: write down a thought.
She said: write down what it caused.
She said: notice that you wrote it down.

I noticed.

I had been writing things down
my whole life,
and not noticing.