There is no door.
There was never a door.
No nameplate. No placard.
No modest rectangle of plastic or metal
in the corridor that says:
this person is expected here,
this person has a place,
this person belongs to this building
and this building belongs to them.
I brought my things in a bag.
I carried what I needed
and I carried it back out again
and there was no place in the institution
that held the shape of my absence
when I was not in it.
Other people have offices.
A desk that knows them.
A chair adjusted to their body.
A window they have looked out of
long enough to know
what the tree outside it does in every season.
I knew the tree outside my window at home.
I taught from that window for years.
Students in other cities, other provinces,
learned in the light of a tree
they never knew existed,
a tree whose name they do not know,
outside a house that was never on the campus map.
My name is not on any door.
It is on the emails they still have.
It is in the feedback they kept.
It is in the thing they said in the interview
that came from week four of my course.
It is in the company name
one student chose
because of a value she learned
in a room she never entered.
My name is on all of that.
None of that is on a door.
All of that is real.
Mi nombre está en lo que construí, no en lo que me dieron.
My name is on what I built, not on what I was given.
