They said it with such clean mouths, such pressed collars, such careful grammar, as if the words were a gift and I should be grateful for the clarity. You are not quite what we are looking for. I went home and looked in the mirror for the missing thing, the gap between my face and the face they had already chosen before I walked through the door. I counted my degrees like rosary beads. I counted my years. I counted the papers, the classrooms, the students who wept at the end of term and said, you changed something in me. None of it was currency here. They smiled while they did it. That is the part that stays, the smile, the warmth in the room while I was being measured against a ruler I was never meant to hold. I rewrote my letter. I softened my edges. I learned their language the way an immigrant learns to laugh at jokes that are about her. I applied again. We had many strong candidates this year. I bought a new suit. I straightened what was already straight. I arrived early, stayed late, published in their journals, cited their names like prayers, sat on the committees no one wanted, carried the invisible work in both arms like groceries up four flights of stairs, and smiled, because you must always smile. We felt someone else was a better fit. Better fit. A sock drawer. A parking space. A peg in the right-shaped hole. I have an education. I have nineteen years. I have read every book they told me would be enough, and then the next book, and the next, following the breadcrumb trail they kept moving just ahead of my hand. I taught the exact same courses. I stood in the exact same rooms, at the exact same hour, holding the exact same ideas they would later decide required someone else's mouth. And when they said no, I punished myself with more work, more late nights, more hours offered up like proof, like penance, like if I just gave enough of myself there would finally be nothing left to reject. The cruelest part is that I believed them. For so long, I believed the problem lived in me, in the particular shape of my ambition, the particular sound of my voice, the particular way I took up space, which was always either too much or so little I became furniture. I have sat in rooms where the air itself said this was never designed for you, and smiled, and contributed, and been thanked in the minutes no one reads. I have been told I am inspiring. Inspiring is what they call you when they have decided you are a visitor. You are not qualified. Say it again. Say it clean. Let it mean what it has always meant, underneath the careful grammar, underneath the pressed collars, underneath the warmth in the room while the door was already closing. I am still here. I am still here, which is its own kind of answer, though I am so tired of the question being me. Aquí estoy.— *Spanish translations assisted by Google Translate (translate.google.com)*
The One Who Stayed Anyway
Photo Credit: Amy Tucker, 2026
Artist Statement: I photographed this pigeon through the glass of a window I was not sure I was allowed to stand at. The bird did not know it was being watched, or did not care. It had chosen the ledge. It was facing the sun. This photograph belongs beside this poem because the bird did not ask permission to remain, and it remained. The light behind it is almost too bright to look at. That felt right.
Translation Note: Spanish phrases in this poem were assisted by Google Translate (translate.google.com). The Spanish is woven in as an act of reclamation, a return to a language of the body and the self that exists beyond institutional English.
