awake in the night thinking about what I am going to teach, what I have to teach, what I can bring to sixth graders that might wake them up that might make a difference in their lives that might hit them as my daughter says in the demographic thinking about what their teacher who is quitting teaching because she's discouraged because her feelings get hurt because the kids are careless the kids are thoughtless the kids disregard adult feelings are disaffected are disinclined to behave are left out are in public frigging school where so many decisions have been made to diseducate disenfranchise discard them because they go to frigging public school what she said the teacher what she wants which is for me to make some sense of a story that is the basis of an international project called machinto based on a picturebook that tells the story horrific and inappropriate for children but which is based on true events and tells the story of a three year old child eating a tomato when the a bomb hit nagasaki who dying with mouth full of tomato tells her mother i want more so her mother combs the devastated city looking for more tomatoes her daughter's voice crying i want more returning to find the child dead but a bird lifting over the city crying i want more which is heartrendingly awful and i am supposed to come up with something a writing prompt a series of writing prompts to connect the kids with this horror and this pathos and this longing and all of this with life affirming lilt and optimism the last part because i will inflict optimism and uplift and possibility that is my job