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• 
  
  Pedro

  Jarquin

  English & Art History

  In What Way?

  One day a student told me there was no way I could feel them.
  There was no way I’d relate.
  I took this as them thinking there was no way I could heal them.
  There was no way we’d equate.

  So I asked them “in what way?”

  They told me I had no idea what it’s like to be poor.
  They told me I would never know what’s hood.
  They told me I would never know what’s hardcore.
  They told me no one ever understood.

  So I asked them “in what way?”

  They told me no one understood the struggle.
  They told me no one understood their pain.
  They told me in a way that wasn’t subtle,
  that all us teacher people were the same.

  So I asked them “in what way?”

  The student soon grew weary of my questioning.
  They started asking questions of their own.
  They even asked me if I was arresting them.
  I said: “my classroom’s not a jail, it is a home.”
  And I explained…
  I grew up with the poorest of the poor,
  where you don’t expect to see another day.
  ‘Cause I was born into an ugly “civil war,”
  in a third-world country far away,
  where eating beans and rice was a commodity,
  only if you had the means to get paid.
  Getting where I got makes me an oddity.
  I too, have faced some of these hardcore stakes.
  My parents left me when I was a baby.
  I had to flee my home when I was six.
  There are those who’ve lived the struggle daily;
  who have broken and are now ready to fix.
  I’m not your king.  I don’t expect you to follow me.
  You just don’t need to question how far I have delved.
  ‘Cause when I come into this classroom I bring all of me;
  the one who feels you and the one who wants to help.

  THEN my student asked, “in what way?”