Dear Maya Angelou

Dear Maya,

My fingers write this letter filled to the brim with a mixture of opposing emotions, some of which I do not know and cannot name.

One thing I do know: you're gone. 

I'm not going to lie to you and say that I broke down in tears.  I didn't go get a collection of your poetry off of my bookshelf and read some of my favorites, because I don't own one.  Honestly, I didn't even Google your name, write a sappy, half-thought-out Facebook post about my sorrow, or Tweet about your passing. But I'm here, now, writing to you, and maybe what I have to say will make up for those things.  Or, maybe, you wouldn't have minded anyway.

I'm currently a teacher.  I know there's no way you would have known that about me, but precisely why I decided to tell you.  In addition to teaching my own classes, I also help a good friend of mine in her room every other day, period 7.  A bunch of hoodlums, I tell you.  Loveable ones, sure-- but little shits nonetheless.

Oh.  Sorry about that. While your class and effervescent beauty would appear to most as a shield against swearing, I'm going to believe that you, Maya, had a mouth of your own sometimes. 

In fact, my little slip-up is the perfect segue into a story I have for you.   It's about a boy in that class I just mentioned. Don't worry, I'll keep it short, Maya-- I know you've probably got a lot of letters, prayers, and words coming your way--but please at least hear me out.

So that classroom full of shits (they really are a lot, I tell ya), well, a lot of their comprehension levels are quite low.  I'd get into why, explain the day-to-day struggles of the students I work with and the school as a whole, but, like I said-- there is no time for that.

Junior, his name was.  My teacher-friend asked me if I could pull the boy (I guess, at seventeen, a young man) out into the hallway, sit down in a pair of desks, and just read "Still I Rise" with him to check for understanding.  If you're not aware, Maya-- that's one of yours.

I took him out into the hallway, and read with him stanza by stanza, questioning him throughout.  I focused a lot on the repetition and simile use, because that was what the class inside was working on.

What do you think she means when she says, "I walk like I've got oil wells/Pumping through my living room?"

I don't know.

Well, what do you know about oil?

It's slippery?

Okay! Keep on that.  How might someone look if he or she "walked" on oil?

Stupid.  They'd probably fall.

After that, I admittedly just went through the motions.  The boy-man was with it enough to get that "the lady keeps getting up when bad things happen", and when you said "the meeting of my thighs", you meant a place he'd seen on a night when he was in love with cheap Tequila and sort of liked the Dominican girl across the room because of the way she smiled at him.

We went back into the classroom:  I helped monitor the class' completion of comprehension questions, and the bell rang eventually.  Another day, over; another eight hours of me feeling beaten down, sucked dry-- over.

Today, I went on Facebook, as I do most mornings, and saw that a plethora of people had posted one of your poems, insightful quotes, or pictures on their profiles.  In the world of social media, this means only one thing: death.

Again, I didn't cry.  I didn't ravage my bookshelf for an anthology with your name inside.  I didn't text anyone, I didn't call anyone, I didn't comment below the "R.I.P, Maya" statuses I saw.

What I did do was think of Junior.  I thought of the kids walking past us in the hallway the day we read your famed poem.  Most acknowledged him with a smirk or an audible chuckle.  A popular boy, nearly every student slapped Junior's hand and casually walked on by, or, at the very least, shouted some obscene message of teenage-boy affection behind his shoulder--all of which Junior responded to with a subtle smile.  There were moments of quiet, though, when the halls were empty, and I remembered how Junior's face looked every time I asked him a question about a word, a line, a simile. 

I don't know, Miss.  I hate this.

Why?  You've got it!  You're doing really well.

I hate this.  Why do we have to do this?

You know, who cares if you're not perfect?  The important thing is that you try.

Miss. I don't know. I hate it.

What was he talking about, Maya?  What did he hate?  I ask you because I didn't ask him myself.  I assume he was talking about reading out loud, because he felt uncomfortable with not only me, but himself.  He also could have meant he hated the fact that he was singled out, the stupid kid in the class, to read with the "other" teacher in the hallway.  Maybe he hated being seen by classmates, fellow peers, hated knowing later he'd have to describe the experience as something other than it was. How else could he keep his status at his lunch table?

I'm trying to connect these two thoughts, and I'm struggling.  What does your death have to do with the struggle of teens in an urban district? 

Perhaps it is this: our words are our truths.

You wrote your truth into existence.  You spoke your truth to billions of people for nearly a century.  As for the lives you've affected through those words?  Just look at Twitter for proof.

Junior will never write his truth, whatever it is, into existence.  He certainly will never speak it.  And I'm fairly certain no one will post to any online platforms about him.  His words will never become anything more than bubbles on the precipice of his lips, waiting to escape, but bursting at the sound of "stupid" or "dumb."

Of your death, CNN.com says, "a literary voice...has fallen silent."  You haven't done any such falling.  If anything, your voice is louder and clearer now than ever before. 

I hope it doesn't take Junior as long to find his words, but I write this letter, Maya, with the knowledge that it might.  And I ask, of you, in all of your eternal beauty, insurmountable passion, and intelligence beyond the brain, that you watch over that boy-- and erase hate, one last time.