"When you're alone."
Can everyone hear me?
All right, not everyone.
Maybe, should I, I'm going to try this.
I'm double miked.
OK.
"When you're alone and too tired even to
turn on any of your devices.
You let yourself linger in a past stacked
among your pillows.
Usually, you are nestled under blankets
and the house is empty.
Sometimes, the moon is missing.
And beyond the windows, the low gray ceiling
seems approachable.
Its dark light dims in degrees, depending
on the density of clouds.
And you fall back into that which
gets reconstructed as metaphor.
The root is often associative.
You smell good.
You're 12, attending St. Philip and James
School on White Plains Road.
And the girl sitting in the seat behind
ask you to lean to the right during exams
so she can copy what you have written.
Sister Evelyn is in the habit of taping the hundreds
and the failing grades to the cold closet doors.
The girl is Catholic, with waist-length, brown hair.
You can't remember her name, Mary Katherine.
You never really speak, except for the time
she makes her requests and, later, when she tells you,
you smell good and have features more like a white person.
You assume she thinks she is thanking you
for letting her cheat and feels better cheating from an almost
white person.
Sister Evelyn never figures out your arrangement.
Perhaps because you never turn around
to copy Mary Katherine's answers.
Sister Evelyn must think, these two girls think a lot alike.
Or she cares less about cheating and more about humiliation.
Or she never actually saw you sitting there."
After the RNC, a lot of people sent me
pictures of somebody sitting behind Michelle Obama.
[LAUGHTER]