My best friend teaches medically fragile children

at an elementary school in New Mexico.

 

She texts me a picture from the desert of grass and trees.

In the foreground are gravestones and a wall of tombs lines the back.

 

“Visiting friends,” she says.

 

Two were former students.

She lost another one this past school year.

 

She regularly refers to her students as

“my kids.”

 

The cemetery is about a mile from her house

and around the holidays it is full of color.

 

She says it’s comforting

knowing her kids are close by.