Chiara Di Lello
footprint
We circle our chairs for a class meeting and
for the first time it's one of my students who
says, Mix it up! We're gender segregated. They
gesture and jabber and after a fifteen-second
starling-like interlude, they do. Whenever they
find my travel mug abandoned on a desk they
lift it up and declare Hmm, I wonder whose this is?
I am trying to be better about bringing the mug,
about washing it so it does not develop a grease
of old milky coffee between its watertight gears.
I bring a different glass one to meetings, one that
adults and children call cute. I don't know what
makes a coffee cup cute. If it’s size then unfortunately
I may merit the same label. This confirms my
conviction that being taller would keep me from
being lumped in with such adjectives. I am trying
to use less plastic, even though it is as easy as
breathing. I will probably never be able to forget
Ben Kingsley duct-taping a plastic bag over his
own head in The House of Sand and Fog, a last
act of resistance. We say gasping like a fish but
that hardly covers the brutal mute reflex of his
body pulling against the plastic for air. Last year
I helped a student write a report about the Great
Pacific Garbage Patch. He was working on adding
details to strengthen his argument. Did you know
it takes one plastic bottle four hundred and fifty
years to break down in the ocean? I wonder how
he is doing this year. He never wrote as quickly
as when he chose that topic. I can tell my class
has turned a corner because now they say all genders
instead of both genders without prompting. It’s a
small thing, but the kind that maybe sticks. They
are so good at coming up with ideas for how to
save the planet. I need to make sure they know
that recycling at home can’t hurt, but we’re going
to have to crush a lot more than soda cans to stem
the tide. If they remember one thing from this
year, I think, holding my overpriced coffee that
I bought on the way to school. That wouldn’t be
a bad impact to have. It’s the kind of thing I
won’t be able to gauge for a long time. The
cumulativeness of plastic in seawater. The things
I do each day knowing they will outlast me.
for the first time it's one of my students who
says, Mix it up! We're gender segregated. They
gesture and jabber and after a fifteen-second
starling-like interlude, they do. Whenever they
find my travel mug abandoned on a desk they
lift it up and declare Hmm, I wonder whose this is?
I am trying to be better about bringing the mug,
about washing it so it does not develop a grease
of old milky coffee between its watertight gears.
I bring a different glass one to meetings, one that
adults and children call cute. I don't know what
makes a coffee cup cute. If it’s size then unfortunately
I may merit the same label. This confirms my
conviction that being taller would keep me from
being lumped in with such adjectives. I am trying
to use less plastic, even though it is as easy as
breathing. I will probably never be able to forget
Ben Kingsley duct-taping a plastic bag over his
own head in The House of Sand and Fog, a last
act of resistance. We say gasping like a fish but
that hardly covers the brutal mute reflex of his
body pulling against the plastic for air. Last year
I helped a student write a report about the Great
Pacific Garbage Patch. He was working on adding
details to strengthen his argument. Did you know
it takes one plastic bottle four hundred and fifty
years to break down in the ocean? I wonder how
he is doing this year. He never wrote as quickly
as when he chose that topic. I can tell my class
has turned a corner because now they say all genders
instead of both genders without prompting. It’s a
small thing, but the kind that maybe sticks. They
are so good at coming up with ideas for how to
save the planet. I need to make sure they know
that recycling at home can’t hurt, but we’re going
to have to crush a lot more than soda cans to stem
the tide. If they remember one thing from this
year, I think, holding my overpriced coffee that
I bought on the way to school. That wouldn’t be
a bad impact to have. It’s the kind of thing I
won’t be able to gauge for a long time. The
cumulativeness of plastic in seawater. The things
I do each day knowing they will outlast me.
Biography
|
Chiara Di Lello (she/her/hers) is a writer and teacher. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets, Noble / Gas Qtrly, and CT Review. Her loyalties lie solidly with public transportation, public art, and public libraries. Her lessons are peppered with Star Wars references.
Find her on Twitter @thetinydynamo |
