that what makes us stronger...

i'm immortal, esther said with a long stare and a slight smirk as she sat still in the weight of her malaria. i don't claim such heights, but i did walk with longer strides on thursday after a rat scurried over my foot as i peed with a candle next to me. i ran out of the stall with my pants still around my ankles and watched the grey round ball hurry up the wall and across the boards to the other bathrooms, the other rooms. it is not the first rat i have seen, but this one touched me.

en la clinica

in the clinic again cleaning his wound, calling him doctor, naming him as one who must help in his healing. he is nine, in first grade, and he says to me: i am not a doctor.
and i tell him: but you could be. what do you want to be, do?
a pause
him: a man
me: but a man needs to work.
silence as i rub antibiotic cream on his foot.
him: with horses. i want to work with horses. and you no?
me: yes, yes. i would like to work with horses too.
i look at him. we smile. i grab a band-aide.
him: and buy a cow
me: a cow?
another pause
him: yes, my dad is going to buy a cow.

thunder in the classroom

the rains have come and the waters rise around the stilted houses. turtles swim between house and kitchen. i see three as i throw my chicken bones to the swamp.

i like the rain at night when i can sit on the porch with candle-light and write while snores and croaks, mating herons and evangelicals are all nulled by the pounding rain, unseen yet there.

during the day, the rain interrupts casual walks to and from classrooms. now we run and arrive as if stepping from the river to a puddled floor where seats are arranged around drips from a corrugated metal ceiling. in what seems like a trash can being pulleted we must talk lips to ears, or yell without being heard. it is inevitable: they must work individually and then pass one by one to read with me. i listen, point to correct and struggle to breath with all this water pushing me down.