LEONEL
Pennsylvania, 2015
In our English as a Second Language class,
Julia from Argentina and Marisol from Mexico
sit side by side, agreeing that English is not
our second language.
For Julia, it’s her fourth, after Italian from her mother
and Spanish from her father, and Portuguese
from a year as an exchange student in Brazil.
For me, it’s a third language, after the Creole
I picked up from my Haitian father
and Spanish from my mother
in the Dominican Republic.
Sometimes it’s hard for me to imagine
knowing only one way of describing
hope.