These People and I

In Training

This woman I once worked with
had the largest eyes I had ever seen.
They were little round moons with brown craters,
lashes as luscious as trees
with perfectly blackened waterlines.
She wore a stocking cap over her hijab,
pinned in place, and said my name
with a slight slant every time.

She said I didn't clean the bathroom quite right.
              If you don't dry the walls all the way,
              the liquid flows down it like tears.
              If you don't mop vigorously enough,
              the dirt hangs on like it is hanging onto       
              its last scrap of life.
              If you don't tie the garbage bags,
              they fall into the bins like sacrifices.

Because she was pregnant,
she didn't do the work herself, just watched
from the side with her big moon eyes
and told me everything I did wrong.
She was my overseer, trained me
like we were training for the janitorial olympics,
rubbed her belly and trotted alongside me
as I worked.

"You're so young," she would say,
"Inexperienced."

I wondered if I should be somewhere
doing something
so much greater.