A poem
A teacher gestures at the sky,
says make it glow, let things grow,
let cans become what cans could be.
But no teacher
placed that boy there —
in the corner of the painting,
hands pressed to ears,
refusing to listen —
the one classmate
who never joins the cleanup,
who walks past the poster
without reading it.
The canvas borrows a concept.
The brushstroke borrows nothing.
Only a child who has always loved green,
who drank Milo before he knew the can could be a cause,
who knelt in actual soil
and coaxed real roots from a school corner
nobody else wanted —
knows to draw that boy.