What was it like again, what were my thoughts
as I sat nearly two decades ago in the kitchen
of my dead father’s house, handwritten notes
on index cards spread out on the table, landline
phone in the middle, waiting to be interviewed
for a job halfway around the world? I mean
I knew it was a job interview, but what
were the risks as I felt them then, sitting
an hour before midnight with an afghan
around my shoulders, a storm raging outside,
praying that the power wouldn’t go out?
It was noon where my unseen interrogators
gathered in a meeting room for the conference
call, with questions about my experience,
probing my visions for translating the ideals
of a multiethnic and literary education
into concrete teaching plans. The battery-
powered clock ticked on the wall; my nerves
skittered wild beneath my collarbone. The sense
of a future and how it might fold— such
high stakes, though I couldn’t yet imagine them,
nor see at all beyond the rain-streaked window-
panes. No one else heard this performance
in my childhood home— everyone was in bed:
my daughters, my mother nursing a hot
water bottle for warmth. Near the end
of an hour, I put the phone down. I’d made
my pitch, whatever that meant; filled in
as best as I could the parts they needed
to see more closely. How to sleep thereafter
for wondering how the river stays the same,
though the waters pouring into it are always
changing; how everything had already
begun to change though everything still
seemed the same. How around us, neighborhoods
breathed though quietened by unrelenting rain.