"Step-by-Step" (Poem about a Story)

Step-by-Step

The first question he asked me was about my

spirituality: Are you Christian? I am Buddhist.

Keo Sitha was an intellectual and an enforcer.

He supported our school director, recorded

attendance, and coordinated the students to empty

trash out at the fire pits, and to sweep the grounds.

Sitha was born in 1975 on the border of Thailand.

He lived in the labor camps and was educated in

Khmer, Thai, and English. He was first trained as

a Khmer primary school teacher, then he became

an English instructor who taught private community

classes and teachers at our high school. In class, he

told me about the time he postponed his studies.

When he was eighteen, he shepherded his family’s

cows along the dirt road when an UXO ignited.

The shrapnel caught his left foot—no other part

of his body. The matrices of Unexploded Ordnances.

Random, unknowing, hidden. The men in the coffee

shops bear their weight on one crutch. Sitha’s prosthetic,

covered by his tennis shoes. A foreign doctor treated

him during these civil wars that preceded the Fall. Or

else, would he have made it? When my impatience

rushes through the lesson plans, Sitha says, we must
go step-by-step. Our unit is on Forgiveness. I follow his lead.