Many students are experiencing precarity in the current political climate. School walls are permeable, and even the best efforts of teachers to create safe environments where young people can learn about and express themselves cannot fully insulate the classroom from the vulnerabilities produced outside of it. These vulnerabilities may inspire, in some students, a desire to stand up, speak out, or share their stories; but they may elicit, in others, a need for strategic or protective silence. Because the ability and will to bring personal histories into school is unevenly distributed-- empowering some, while leaving others feeling exposed--English teachers face the challenge of navigating this tension. Educators must take seriously students' needs both for relevant curricula and for pedagogies that do not reproduce already existing vulnerability. In this article, the authors describe how two teachers worked to negotiate these competing needs, using literary perspective to support students in exploring identity while strategically selecting the distance from which they participate. The authors describe this as a process of "composing proximity," which is illustrated through the design of an inquiry-driven unit.