Noor Fatima

First Place: Poetry

“Now I Know My ABCs” 
by Noor Fatima
11th grade, Somerset County Vocational & Technical High School

—

Air, I learned to breathe quietly.
Bus seat, left open only after I stopped reaching for it.
Customs, asking what I carried, and me almost saying: every version of myself.
Doorway, where Mama left one voice outside and carried another in.
English, a borrowed coat I wore buttoned wrong until it learned my shoulders.
Foreign, the word they used when my distance made them uncomfortable.
Girlhood, learning which parts of me to fold small enough for the table.
Home, the word I kept unpacking in addresses that forgot my shape.
Immigrant, a child taught to be grateful for the door and ashamed of the knocking.
Joke, where my smile arrived before my understanding.
Kitchen, where Mama’s voice stood to its full height again.
Language, the first home I lost and the only one that followed me.
Map, a paper body folded until my homes stopped touching.
Name, the prayer people tried to shorten into something easier to pass around.
Other, the box they checked when none of the others could hold me.
Passport, a booklet that knew how to spell me better than my classmates did.
Quiet, the language I spoke when correction entered the room.
Return, finding the old self alive inside the one I had practiced.
School, where I learned the alphabet twice: once for reading, once for disappearing.
Translation, the part of Mama’s sentence that did not survive the room.
Unlearning, taking my mouth back from the people who trained it to apologize.
Voice, what grew under my tongue while I smiled with my mouth closed.
Window, where I watched girls become fluent in ease.
X-ray, what I wished the world had, so it could see that I am not empty inside.
Yesterday, the life I keep leaving and waking up inside.
Zero, the number I became when every place counted me differently.
Then back to A, again.