What I Didn't Mean to Inherit

I stand in front of a room now, say Ingeniero before my own name, and something in my chest still expects him to laugh at that, to ask if I remember the fastest way across the city without touching the wrong avenue. I never asked to know every street's old name, where it changes without warning, but somehow I do, in this city instead of his, Dublin's grey grid learned the way he taught me without ever teaching it, by walking, by getting there, by never once saying I don't know. He fixed what was broken and called it love. I explain what is broken and call it teaching. Close enough. Some nights, mid sentence, I hear him in my own voice, patient with a room the way he was never quite patient with me, and I let it happen. I did not choose to become his second draft. I just kept walking until I noticed the streets already made sense.