It is easy to write myself through
the view, my bay window
stolid and sprinkled
with familied children and shouts
of “Watch out!”

But here,
scaffolding rises
around lost little lungs;
hammers hacking asbestos.

In this classroom
there is little
one could understand
without being a fly.
(We are all in too deep).

Windows are barred, dirty.
Not seeing out is how it is,
these things just are
(they say) and each day
fewer anecdotes suffice
to explain this disarray.

I could tell you of the morning
someone’s father left, the belled schedule
holding sadness, little bodies shaking,
eyes glazed straight ahead,
lost focus, wanting the will to wage
the mêlée of yesterday becoming tomorrow, today.

Or I could tell you what we read today
“The apple does not fall far from the tree,”
you see? And a small someone, who once wished
for invisibility, whispered,
“But sometimes, after it falls,
it just keeps rolling.”

And suddenly we have suddenly
from somewhere deep inside we laugh
guttural depths, rule breaking,
baffling, brilliance,
where, for a moment, we smile and know
what it is to be home here,
where scaffolding filters
light to a broken system.

For a moment, we know why
to try, desperately, to prism.