But I knew you.
I knew the way you wrote in the first week,
careful and a little formal,
the voice of someone not yet sure
they are allowed to take up space here.
I knew when that changed.
I always knew when that changed.
You started to trust the sentence.
You stopped apologizing for the question.
You wrote something in week six
that made me sit with it before I answered,
because it deserved sitting with,
because you had found something true
in the material and also in yourself
and the two had met on the page
and made something I had not seen before.
I marked it the way it deserved to be marked.
I wrote more than I was required to write.
That is not unusual.
I always wrote more than I was required.
The institution did not ask me to see you.
The institution asked me to assess you,
to place you in a category,
to move you through.
I did the other thing anyway.
I saw you.
The one who disappeared in week nine
and came back in week eleven
with no explanation,
and I did not ask for one,
I just held the door open
and said: you are still here,
that is what matters,
let us keep going.
The one who wrote at the bottom of the final submission:
I almost quit in October.
I don’t know if you noticed
but the way you responded to my post that week
was the reason I didn’t.
I noticed.
I always noticed.
I just did not know you were on the edge.
That is the thing about teaching through a screen,
you learn to read the small signals,
the slight change in tone,
the post that is shorter than usual,
the question that is not really about the assignment.
You were always more than the assignment.
I knew that from week one.
I built the course so you would know it too.
You wrote to me years later,
some of you.
Subject lines I still have.
I wanted you to know.
I think about that class.
I got the job.
I am keeping those.
Whatever else they take,
they will not take those.
You were the reason I came back every year.
Not the contract.
Not the renewal.
You.
Specifically.
The particular you
that showed up in September
not knowing yet
what you were capable of.
I knew.
I always knew before you did.
That was the job.
That was the whole job.
Para los que llegaron desde lejos y de todas formas llegaron.
For the ones who came from far away and arrived anyway.
