A Bribe
The summer before I started 7th grade,
I sat across from my mother,
the kitchen table between us,
watched her write on
some scrap, fold it crosswise,
& slide it to me. Carefully
I ran my fingers across
the fold & pretended
to consider. She wanted
me to take French, almost
her native tounge, so badly that
she offered 200$, all
the money I could imagine, & more
than I had ever held in one hand.
So I took French of course
& I think she imagined
us speaking to one another
over dinner, sharing secrets
while my father chewed his pasta
dumbly, my sister already in her room,
but five years later I could hardly
conjugate a verb & now I know
nothing of it. Those words & grammar
spent without a return.
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