"The Error of Echo."
"The day I won the school spelling bee,
Jeff Wood was in eighth grade, and I was in fourth.
I think of him at odd times, like standing in front of a tea
kettle, and I still feel bad his friends teased
him the rest of the day for losing
by misspelling the word echo.
As in reflection of sound.
The wistful whispering of salaat in every corner
of the mosque, those still dark almost-mornings.
'Do you hear an echo?'
they taunted Jeff when he tried to speak.
E-C-O he had sounded out careful and slow,
hands easy in the pockets of his Wranglers.
That football shaped belt buckle catching light
reflected by the stacks of stainless steel
hot trays at the end of the old cafeteria.
I spent so many singular hours there wishing I
was someone, anyone else.
E-C-O he had spelled.
As in prefix for ecosystem.
As in I am alive.
A small part of some bewildered and beautiful series
of frameworks.
After, I was embarrassed.
You know, the way you are when you're young and don't
know how to hold the--
After, I was embarrassed the way you
are when you're young and don't know
how to hold the possibility of your own potential.
Mrs. Simmons handed me a trophy, and Jeff and I probably
shook hands.
Do you hear an echo?
As in young and beautiful nymph cursed to endlessly repeat
the voice of another.
As in I too have been so afraid that the only way I could speak
was on my own."