People asked me sometimes
why I stayed.
Not unkindly.
They were trying to understand
the logic of a person
who keeps returning to work
that does not return the security,
that does not build the pension,
that does not accumulate the seniority
that turns years into rights.
Why do you stay?
I told them the practical things.
The schedule. The work I wanted.
The absence of a better map.
All of that was true.
None of that was the reason.
The reason was you.
The student who sent me the essay
she had written for another class,
subject line: you taught me how to do this.
The student who came back
three years later
to tell me she had gotten the promotion
and in the interview
she had used the framework
from week four
and it had worked.
The student who wrote,
in the comments of the final discussion:
I did not think I was someone who could do this.
I think that now.
You were the reason.
Not the institution.
Not the contract.
Not the annual calculation
of whether my labour
was worth another year of rental.
You.
Specifically and collectively.
Every September cohort.
Every cohort that arrived uncertain
and left knowing something
about themselves and the world
and the relationship between the two
that they did not know before.
I was part of that.
That is not nothing.
That is not a small thing
to dress up as sufficient.
That is a life’s work
that I am not willing to diminish
because the institution
chose not to recognize it properly.
It was reason enough.
It was always reason enough.
Siempre fuiste suficiente razón. Siempre.
You were always reason enough. Always.
