Ms Kerry Graham

Tonight’s sunset is beautiful in a way I’ve been praying to please see again soon. I’m on my deck—built within the last few years; I didn’t have it when I bought this house a decade ago, almost to the day, and into which you helped me move—and see someone pedaling by on the cross street below who, I think in the way he sits, reminds me of you.

Except you don’t look like that anymore, of course you don’t. The boy on the bike looks like what you used to look like, back when you were in high school, but not while I taught you. You probably looked like that sometime around the beginning of your senior year, when I was no longer your teacher and yet—always, of course—your teacher. When would I ever not be?

What do you look like now? You’re in your what, mid-twenties? Late twenties?! Oh, my gosh—it’s actually your birthday today! May 5th. Because of you, for almost 15 years, I smile at every mention of cingo de mayo. This day has always felt like the perfect one to be yours—something about the double 5s.

I’m smiling at how good it feels to remember how much I love you. Eager to wish you a happy birthday, I almost pull you up in my phone until remembering that my last text didn’t go through.

Then, somehow, I know.

I don’t know how. I just know that I know. My fingers poised to type your name in the search bar, finding proof of what I never want to be true, I think, “I don’t have to do this today. I can wait until it’s not his birthday.”

But because I already know, and waiting to confirm won’t change it—today, your birthday, turns out to be the day I’ve been afraid of this entire time—I look. Learn that, somehow, you’ve been gone since December 15, 2023.

We met when I was 28. Today, my lovely, you should have turned 29.

I love you, lovely. I’ll never have the right words, but thank god I always, of course have those.

After I received my new ID (with my original photo from summer 2011) at school today, I gifted the lovelies a show and tell.

“Hey, lovelies, this is from my first year of teaching. Do I look like me?”

When my second class came in, I told them how some from my first pointed at my ID, said, “Aura,” and when I asked if I still had it, SAID NO. The first lovely who I showed in the second class hadn’t been listening to me as I said any of this, so when she said, “Ms Graham, you look the same,” I told her I was gonna give her a point.

“Hold up hold up hold up Ms Graham lemme see that too. [ . . . ] Oh, Ms Graham, you cute as a BUTTON.”

“Girl, yes, you the same except for your hair.”

“Wait, if you’re 27 here, how old are you now?”

“You look like a mom.” (To which I said, “What does that mean?” and her friend looked and said, “Oh yeah she do,” and I said, “What does that mean?” and they both shrugged, and I said, “Do I look like a mom now?” and they said—immediately and simultaneously—“No.”)

“Ms Graham, you look lean.”

“When were you born? 1983? This makes me wish I was born in 1982.”
. . And I still have two more classes to show on Monday.

Celebrating with selfies: I’m (officially!) back where I belong. 💜💜💜