11.12.2025

I was a teacher too. Taught unnative Englishers how to be more good.

To think to have to get up every morning. To have to be hygienic about things. To put on sometimes a tie even. To wait for the el for as long as the el takes and then to squeeze into a stranger's armpit and inhale humanity's fumes.

To ride in that unholy configuration exactly the number of stops it takes and with unseen delays between each one. To emerge from those tunnels like a miner. Covered in coal dust packing black lung.

To go willing into the pale glare of tube lights. Ancient fluorescence. To speak to no one because you have no community among adjuncts.

The classroom though I liked. The students were bright and even focused sometimes. Many of them were artists. We told stories about our own cultures and when we got to comparing idioms the room dissolved in laughter.