Elizabeth Acevedo - The Poet X – WINNER OF THE CILIP CARNEGIE MEDAL 2019

Boys Boys X: You make out with any boys while you were in D.R.? C: Girl, stop. Always talking about some boys. X: Well if you didn’t kiss nobody, why you all red in the face? C: Xiomara, you know I didn’t kiss no boy. Just like I know you didn’t. X: Don’t look at me like that. I’m not proud of the fact that I still ain’t kiss nobody. It’s a damn shame, we’re almost sixteen. C: Don’t say damn , Xiomara. And don’t roll your eyes at me either. You won’t even be sixteen until January. X: I’m just saying, I’m ready to stop being a nun. Kiss a boy, shoot, I’m ready to creep with him behind a stairwell and let him feel me up. C: Oh God, girl. I really just can’t with you. Here, here’s the Book of Ruth. Learn yourself some virtue. X: Tsk, tsk. You gonna talk about this in a church, then take his name in vain. Ouch! C: Keep talking mess. I’m going to do more than pinch you. I don’t know why I missed you. X: Maybe because I make you laugh more than your stuffy-ass church mission friends? C: I can’t with you. Now, stop worrying about kissing and boys. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.

Caridad and I Shouldn’t Be Friends Caridad and I Shouldn’t Be Friends We are not two sides of the same coin. We are not ever mistaken for sisters. We don’t look alike, don’t sound alike. We don’t make no damn sense as friends. I curse up a storm and am always ready to knuckle up. Caridad recites Bible verses and promotes peace. I’m ready to finally feel what it’s like to like a boy. Caridad wants to wait for marriage. I’m afraid of my mother so I listen to what she says. Caridad genuinely respects her parents. I should hate Caridad. She’s all my parents want in a daughter. She’s everything I could never be. But Caridad, Twin, and I have known each other since diapers. We celebrate birthdays together, attended Bible camp sleepovers with each other, spend Christmas Eve at each other’s houses. She knows me in ways I don’t have to explain. Can see one of my tantrums coming a mile off, knows when I need her to joke, or when I need to fume, or when I need to be told about myself. Mostly, Caridad isn’t all extra goody-goody in her judgment. She knows all about the questions I have, about church, and boys, and Mami. But she don’t ever tell me I’m wrong. She just gives me one of her looks, full of so much charity, and tells me that she knows I’ll figure it all out.

Questions I Have Questions I Have Without Mami’s Rikers Island Prison–like rules, I don’t know who I would be when it comes to boys. It’s so complicated. For a while now I’ve been having all these feelings. Noticing boys more than I used to. And I get all this attention from guys but it’s like a sancocho of emotions. This stew of mixed-up ingredients: partly flattered they think I’m attractive, partly scared they’re only interested in my ass and boobs, and a good measure of Mami-will-kill-me fear sprinkled on top. What if I like a boy too much and become addicted to sex like Iliana from Amsterdam Ave.? Three kids, no daddy around, and baby bibs instead of a diploma hanging on her wall. What if I like a boy too much and he breaks my heart, and I wind up angry and bitter like Mami, walking around always exclaiming how men ain’t shit, even when my father and brother are in the same room? What if I like a boy too much and none of those things happen . . . they’re the only scales I have. How does a girl like me figure out the weight of what it means to love a boy?

Night before First Day of School Night before First Day of School As I lie in bed, thinking of this new school year, I feel myself stretching my skin apart. Even with my Amazon frame, I feel too small for all that’s inside me. I want to break myself open like an egg smacked hard against an edge. Teachers always say that each school year is a new start: but even before this day I think I’ve been beginning.

H.S. H.S. My high school is one of those old-school structures from the Great Depression days, or something. Kids come from all five boroughs, and most of us bus or train, although since it’s my zone school, I can walk to it on a nice day. Chisholm H.S. sits wide and squat, taking up half a block, redbrick and fenced-in courtyard with ball hoops and benches. It’s not like Twin’s fancy genius school: glass, and futuristic. This is the typical hood school, and not too long ago it was considered one of the worst in the city: gang fights in the morning and drug deals in the classroom. It’s not like that anymore, but one thing I know for sure is that reputations last longer than the time it takes to make them. So I walk through metal detectors, and turn my pockets out, and greet security guards by name, and am one of hundreds who every day are sifted like flour through the doors. And I keep my head down, and I cause no waves. I guess what I’m trying to say is, this place is a place, neither safe nor unsafe, just a means, just a way to get closer to escape.

Ms. Galiano Ms. Galiano Is not what I expected. Everyone talks about her like she’s super strict and always assigning the toughest homework. So I expected someone older, a buttoned-up, floppy-haired, suit-wearing teacher, with glasses sliding down her nose. Ms. Galiano is young, has on bright colors, and wears her hair naturally curly. She’s also little—like, for real petite— but carries herself big, know what I mean? Like she’s used to shouldering her way through any assumptions made about her. Today, I have her first-period English, and after an hour and fifteen minutes of icebreakers, where we learn one another’s names (Ms. Galiano pronounces mine right on the first try), she gives us our first assignment: “Write about the most impactful day of your life.” And although it’s the first week of school, and teachers always fake the funk the first week, I have a feeling Ms. Galiano actually wants to know my answer.

Rough Draft of Assignment 1—Write about the most impactful day of your life. Rough Draft of Assignment 1—Write about the most impactful day of your life. The day my period came, in fifth grade, was just that, the ending of a childhood sentence. The next phrase starting in all CAPS. No one had explained what to do. I’d heard older girls talk about “that time of the month” but never what someone was supposed to use. Mami was still at work when I got home from school and went to pee, only to see my panties smudged in blood. I pushed Twin off the computer and Googled “Blood down there.” Then I snuck money from where Mami hides it beneath the pans, bought tampons that I shoved into my body the way I’d seen Father Sean cork the sacramental wine. It was almost summer. I was wearing shorts. I put the tampon in wrong. It only stuck up halfway and the blood smeared between my thighs. When Mami came home I was crying. I pointed at the instructions; Mami put her hand out but didn’t take them. Instead she backhanded me so quick she cut open my lip. “Good girls don’t wear tampones. Are you still a virgin? Are you having relations?” I didn’t know how to answer her, I could only cry. She shook her head and told me to skip church that day. Threw away the box of tampons, saying they were for cueros. That she would buy me pads. Said eleven was too young. That she would pray on my behalf. I didn’t understand what she was saying. But I stopped crying. I licked at my split lip. I prayed for the bleeding to stop.

Final Draft of Assignment 1 (What I Actually Turn In) Final Draft of Assignment 1 (What I Actually Turn In) Xiomara Batista Friday, September 7 Ms. Galiano The Most Impactful Day of My Life, Final Draft When I turned twelve my twin brother saved up enough lunch money to get me something fancy: a notebook for our birthday. (I got him some steel knuckles so he could defend himself, but he used them to conduct electricity for a science project instead. My brother’s a genius.) The notebook wasn’t the regular marble kind most kids use. He bought it from the bookstore. The cover is made of leather, with a woman reaching to the sky etched on the outside, and a bunch of motivational quotes scattered like flower petals throughout the pages. My brother says I don’t talk enough so he hoped this notebook would give me a place to put my thoughts. Every now and then, I dress my thoughts in the clothing of a poem. Try to figure out if my world changes once I set down these words. This was the first time someone gave me a place to collect my thoughts. In some ways, it seemed like he was saying that my thoughts were important. From that day forward I’ve written every single day. Sometimes it seems like writing is the only way I keep from hurting.