A Student Stops by My Classroom, and: Deciphering Grief

A Student Stops by My Classroom, and: Deciphering Grief Melissa Fite Johnson (bio) A Student Stops by My Classroom to say goodbye. Winter break. An hour later, we're still talking.She reminds me of me. She sees it, too. Sometimesshe's the only one laughing when I hoped the whole class would.I don't have a daughter. Don't know what it's like to have a daughter. She asks where she should go to college.The whole time she's talking she's fiddling with her bag.It won't zip. I tell her I can't tell her, but I knowthere's no one right choice. Many paths to happiness. She says she'd go local but it won't impress anyone. She knowsthat sounds awful but if she's being honest. I tell her I'm not sureI wanted to be Kansas Poet Laureate. I wanted to be important.No one's impressed by high school teacher. They say, Wow, so noble, but…She nods. She gets it. She's thinking of becoming a lawyerso maybe she'll be her parents' favorite. She laughs like it's a joke.Finally the bag zips. I tell her please keep me posted,I'm invested. She says she will. I don't have a daughter. This is not that. End Page 220 Deciphering Grief His left palm blossomed all attention, stronger fist. The right'smessy handwriting. My father's fire gone from his whole right side.When he died, my mother wore her grief like a nightgownand rebounded with a monster. I unhooked myself from old definitions,half-asleep like in the sitcom where someone snaps and saysEarth to Melissa. I stopped reading my horoscope; I didn't want to know.I held a knife to my wrist but knew I was being dramatic,trying to decipher like I was a character in English class.My mother's face a full moon, white. How could I? Well,how could she? I stayed in her house longer than I should have.Better the devil you know. Better the shadows. Better the weeds.We apologized twenty years later, balanced on either sideof our counselor whose job it was to see our story in the ashes of the blaze. End Page 221 Melissa Fite Johnson Melissa Fite Johnson is the author of three full-length collections, most recently Midlife Abecedarian (Riot in Your Throat, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, HAD, Whale Road Review, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Melissa teaches high school English in Lawrence, KS, where she and her husband live with their dogs. Copyright © 2024 Pleiades and Pleiades Press