It's Time,
says The Only Luckiest Girl in New York, to go back. Back to school, dorm, dining hall, routine. Back to classes, classmates, roommates, literary soulmates. To my room in Stiles and my window seat in St. Anthony Hall. To Tuesday breakfasts, Thursday meetings, morning tutorings. To new found faces faithfully waiting, watching over walkways and archways. To lions and bears and roses inscribed under eves or over windows. To communal bathrooms. To lectures, seminars, poetry meetings. To hiking science hill with wind biting into my bagel breakfast and drinking down the hot of my chocolate. To the shop. To sawdust in my hair and glue on my clothes. To stone radiating sunlight. To Harkness pink and singing the sunset. To treadmills and treading water in conversations over my head. To the angel with the broken wings. To kettles of tea. To home from home.
I went back to Horace Mann Thursday. It was alright. I was, too. Wonderful to see you, Dr. Schiller. Good to be greeted by teachers, shmeekety-shmocks, people who have watched you for years. Right off recruited by Madame Rotman for French Day, now redone inclusive and dubbed International Day. Funny to see flyers on the bulletin boards for Legal Fiction, Mental Boom, Percolation or some incarnation of it. Publications, frames and teachers, school's soul, stay same, insane. The Shining ones happy to hear and see. School was welcoming if wanting in familiar underclassmen. Strange this constant turnover, persistent succession of kings and queens ruling their little fiefdoms of lunch room tables, clubs, hallways, hang outs of high school. Yet still similar groups emerge. The lobbyists, the ski lodge kids in front of the fire place, the cocky jocks, the self-aware ninth grade girls, the droolers dreaming crunched in library chairs. Seema and I wandered through the new theater, jaw dropping almost-jealous. Gazed at pictures of plays straying from early eighties with cousin Tuttman in Look Homeward Angel to productions of the oughts to have done more theater. There fluorescent flotation devices drip Midsummer Night's Dream. So young, so young. But besides photos, no ghosts this time. Went looking for them but barely found traces around bookshelves outgrown small. Hallways are not haunted. The past impales someone else, not me. Memory served correctly. I remembered I got what we wanted from high school. And will always adore a teacher. Visit fond and fun. I won. Horace Mann, good place to have come from. I'm going to where I become.
I went back to Horace Mann Thursday. It was alright. I was, too. Wonderful to see you, Dr. Schiller. Good to be greeted by teachers, shmeekety-shmocks, people who have watched you for years. Right off recruited by Madame Rotman for French Day, now redone inclusive and dubbed International Day. Funny to see flyers on the bulletin boards for Legal Fiction, Mental Boom, Percolation or some incarnation of it. Publications, frames and teachers, school's soul, stay same, insane. The Shining ones happy to hear and see. School was welcoming if wanting in familiar underclassmen. Strange this constant turnover, persistent succession of kings and queens ruling their little fiefdoms of lunch room tables, clubs, hallways, hang outs of high school. Yet still similar groups emerge. The lobbyists, the ski lodge kids in front of the fire place, the cocky jocks, the self-aware ninth grade girls, the droolers dreaming crunched in library chairs. Seema and I wandered through the new theater, jaw dropping almost-jealous. Gazed at pictures of plays straying from early eighties with cousin Tuttman in Look Homeward Angel to productions of the oughts to have done more theater. There fluorescent flotation devices drip Midsummer Night's Dream. So young, so young. But besides photos, no ghosts this time. Went looking for them but barely found traces around bookshelves outgrown small. Hallways are not haunted. The past impales someone else, not me. Memory served correctly. I remembered I got what we wanted from high school. And will always adore a teacher. Visit fond and fun. I won. Horace Mann, good place to have come from. I'm going to where I become.
