Ernie Westernwille

He was a boy, or rather my classmate

in room number 3B, in the colorful part of the school

that was covered in posters and glue and stickers

reserved exclusively for third grade

he’d wear grey pants, a greyer shirt

and white shoes, more black than white

and his hair was snipped

along the edges, like a bush trimmed

by a gardener with uncertain hands

he’d have bruised palms –

which he’d keep dabbing with leaves

and refuse to allow the school nurse

to apply antiseptic, he’d say he doesn’t want

this sticky, sickly, city medicine

his notebook pages were a deep, husky yellow

his turmeric fingerprints overpowering the algebra

engulfing the coefficient and variable

and in literature, he’d write poetry

his lines curving and curling like a wild creeper

that reaches out, and winds itself

around a bit of sky

strangulating it, so much so –

that it squeezes out the blue

in biology, he’d describe birds with purple feathers

and crimson beaks, and say that he’d once caught a snake

who was sprinkled with real diamond and gold

and on Christmas, when the school

would take us to the church, and position us before

the Giving Tree, and ask us to write

on scraps of felt-tip paper

one thing, we really, really wanted

Ernie Westernwille would look at the paper

spin it around, and marvel at the way

the glitter rubbed off on his fingers

and when he’d see that all of us

were thinking and writing, he’d secretly write

that the only thing

he really, really wanted

was a father