What it’s really like to be a student of color in the Ivy league.

Soon a rumor spread through the city that a pig was riding on another pig, circling through the streets, commanding the riot.

You’ll barely notice him, he won’t nag or pester you, doesn’t even sing the way other kids do.

Only for a short time, my mother promised when she left, but the shortness has grown longer, many years, almost twelve, and I am now grown.

We reported on the two-way radio that the only nut alive asked to surrender.

She hugged me goodbye and left in her boat. I didn’t wait for the boat to grow smaller. I walked into the jungle. I wanted to be something real.

We realize, of course, that one day the force may strike again, leaving one of us breathless at the side of the road.