My name is Padrik Othema, I'm a poet from Ireland and I turned a poetry because I don't always sleep well.

And in the middle of the night I like to get up and to do something kind and calm and calming to help me get through a night when I know I'm not going to sleep.

And I find that a company would be a great friend in the middle of the night.

What you missed that day you were absent from fourth grade by Brad Aaron Model.

Mrs Nelson explained how to stand still and listen to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas, how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer.

She took questions on how not to feel lost in the dark.

After lunch she distributed worksheets that covered ways to remember your grandfather's voice.

Then the class discussed falling asleep without feeling you had forgotten to do something else, something important, and how to believe the house you wake in is your home.

This prompted Mrs Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing how to chant the sounds during cigarette breaks and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts are all you hear.

Also, that you have enough.

The English lesson was that I am is a complete sentence.

And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation look easy.

The one that proves that hundreds of questions and feeling cold and all those nights spent looking for whatever it was you lost and one person add up to something.

The title of the poem, what you miss that day you were absent from fourth grade has a grade since a humour in it.

The idea that any teacher would teach nine or ten year olds how to chant the sounds while taking cigarette breaks is fantastic and ridiculous.

But it speaks to the strong sense of a person feeling that they missed out.

And I found myself when I read this poem thinking what was the day that we were taught that gay boys are boys to?

What was the day that we were taught that loving poetry was enough?

What was the day we taught that feeling desperately lonely even when you're at hen was okay?

How could we be brought into the consolation that as you looked at your own family and felt like everybody else's family is more together than mine?

That that's okay.

How could any of these things be wrapped into the story of a life?

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