I''m Nobody I''m nobody! Who are you? Ms. Franklin wrote on the whiteboard Um, you''re Ms. Franklin the class laughed And you already know who we are! That was back in seventh grade at the Meadowlake School where Ms. Franklin smiled and swung her long red hair back over her shoulder before reading us this poem about a frog in a bog she said was about being humble not seeking attention She also made some connection to social media how everyone wants to be liked or seen all the time but how that''s not the meaning of life how true happiness comes from inside and from relationships I Understood What Ms. Franklin meant at the time but it really made sense to me once I started going to I.S. 23 where I want to be seen but also wish I were a little bit invisible like a lunar eclipse fully present but also masked by shadow It Should Have Been Easy To respond to Ms. Franklin''s writing prompt about What it means to be person but it wasn''t I don''t remember what I wrote or if I even wrote anything at all I do remember a strong feeling Rising inside of me like my heart was full but not in a joyful way I couldn''t think of what to say my head felt heavy as if filled with lead my hands got sweaty just holding my pen My palms smelled metallic like they did when I was little after swinging on the monkey bars in Washington Square Park back when life felt less complex just one hand after the other after the next the other one after that Fact One interesting fact about me is that I learned to read when I was three not because I am a genius but because I was afraid of animals the stuffed kind with cold button eyes that stared at me as I lay in my playpen or crib Their plush fur and floppy ears didn''t comfort me the way my parents did so Mom and Dad put books in my bed instead and I clung to them the way other kids cuddle teddy bears bunnies and giraffes Books Each night I''d fall asleep with a book tucked under my cheek Yum Yum Dim Sum or some board book about Lunar New Year or how to do kung fu anything Chinese because even then my parents were trying to show me how to be more how I looked Words My parents still laugh about the first time they saw me turning pages with my chubby thumbs sounding out words like Cat Mat Sat Hat in books by Dr.

Seuss I was only three but they could see I was teaching myself how to read Baby Like Me It blew my mind! Mom always says It blew everyone''s mind! Dad always chimes in it''s true not many people know a child who learned to read at the age of three especially an adopted baby like me who spent her first months hearing Chinese in an orphanage in Beijing Someplace Far Away Even today we three laugh about the time my parents first saw me swaddled in a red silk quilt pumping my plump legs like I was biking to the moon or someplace far away as New York the city where I have lived ever since Mom and Dad brought me home from China Mooncake That was back when I still had rosy cheeks round as the mooncake I find waiting for me on a plate a Post-it stuck to its rim: See you at 8! xo Mom On days when she has a late meeting my mom always leaves me something sweet from the deli on the corner or from her favorite bakery in Chinatown Hop Wen close to the Community College of Lower Manhattan where she teaches American literature Keeper Flicking Mom''s note into the trash I rip open a fresh package of Oreos kick my Dr. Martens off toward the corner of the kitchen and call for Keeper It''s a long minute before I hear Keeper''s tags jingle faint like a distant wind chime as he grunts to get up from his bed by the bathroom his brittle claws clicking across the wide planks of our soft wood floor Here, Keeps I whistle shoving a cookie too fast into my face I am starving! I think then wince as the rough Oreo edge scrapes the roof of my mouth Here, Keeps I repeat worrying the scuff with my tongue while he waddles over tail ticking slow as a metronome his whole body winding down like a worn-out clock Cookie Keeper snuffles down the cookie I hold out in a single gulp his watery brown eyes widen with surprise from the sudden rush of sugar before he shuffles over to his other bed beneath the kitchen table Old as he is Keeper is still the only dog we know able to eat cocoa and not die our whole family jokes it''s the Oreos that are keeping him alive but we don''t laugh as hard about that one as we used to careful now about not jinxing him Spent by the effort Keeper closes his eyes and sighs fluttering the cloth above his head with a puff of warm breat h as his ears twitch their way into the drift of a dream Keeper and Me Keepe.