In Nae

I know bullies, how they’ll take
anything about you and weaponize it;
how they’ll make you feel like shit.

I want to feel like the teacher people
are surprised to find out doesn’t
have children. Let me have that for now.

I also know that asking you
to wear this uniform today
means more than a change of clothes.

The bare feet, the deep V cut neckline
(girls wear undershirts that peek out here),
the wide mouthed magicians’ sleeves.

Yours, being brand new, unfolds
into a map of Korea; the mountains
of creases too stubborn to erase.

It’s blinding as fallen snow in morning.
(Remember? The white belt is Heaven’s belt,
where sun and rain and happiness come from.)

I’ll wear mine too, frayed and gray.
That’s how people used to get their black belts,
the sweat of trial, the dirt of error.

I dressed for each class at first,
if you remember. Then, tshirts and jeans became easy,
facing bullies, even at my age, hard.

There are skid marks here from when
I let a practice knife slip, and an inkling
of blood in the shape of half an asterisk

but nothing like the body beneath.
My shins are pebbled beaches.
My toe will never grow straight again.

You’d know these things if we had changed
together, in the small amounts of nakedness
that can’t escape our eyes. I’m sorry you don’t.

We’re the oddest pair to stand together:
the grown and growing, the prejudiced
against over and under achieving.

We begin about a stone’s skipping distance apart.
I know it’s not easy being so far away;
we’ve always practiced next to each other.

It’s not that you were a shadow, whose shape
is only ever an afterthought. You are water
and learn through the shapes of things nearby.

Push ups, burpees, and suicides.
(it’s just their name, remember that?) You know
these well; I think I even see you smile.

Your first mistake is also mine; a punch
thrown too high. I almost speak but all
my help must come before or after now.

I smile to remember myself, of when
I kicked so much my legs went numb
and questioned if I would walk again

or when I tried to put my elbow
through a brick, the shock of pain as neat
as the edge of a leaf, or when

You’re huffing now, paying the price
for my second mistake: forgetting to say stop,
underestimating your faith in my judgment.

Instead of kicks, I ask for a tenet
of Tae Kwon Do. (We’ve practiced this
for weeks, were in cahoots. Remember it?)

You say, perseverance, not courtesy or
integrity or self control or indomitable
spirit or victory or love.