OF POEMS AND PAST THINGS

Perhaps it's because nearly everyone I know is getting into the thick of Fall semester, or perhaps it's due to my now working on a campus and being surrounded by bustling students, but I miss school. I miss the daily feeling of my knowledge expanding. Yes, I am still endeavoring to educate myself, but it's a little different when attendance to do so isn't mandatory and if I don't feel like reading 100 pages of a book it doesn't negatively affect my chances of earning a degree and succeeding at life. And yes, there are many other things about school that I miss, but I haven't been able to put them into adequate words quite yet. 

Anyways. This missing has resulted in me going back through my troves of early college writing and happening upon the poetry I wrote for the creative writing class I took freshman year that, along with many, many other things, resulted in me pursuing an English degree. Mostly, they make me laugh, and since it's Friday and I'm feeling wild, here is one of my favorites. The assignment was to write a poem about a place, and, utterly devoid of inspiration and exasperated with that reality, while sitting in the library I decided to just write about sitting in the library. It is untitled, and that is probably for the best. Ahem:

Empty air and

Empty chairs

Stagnant as that book on a shelf that’s never checked out—

This is the library during Spring semester.

Silence. Then

Far away footsteps crescendo,

Left, right,

Left, right, I

Left my heart in the Jane Austen section, as

Most of us do.

Look up.

Was he watching me when he walked by?

Probably.

…Silence.

Cough.

Silence again.

Soon enough that musty book smell travels

to my mouth.

So this is what literature tastes like.

Look up.

Try to count the sea of cloned tables and stop

At seventeen. Too many. Mostly empty except

For that one guy.

Yes, him.

Tapping away in Morse code on his laptop with

The candy-striped tie and too-big glasses.

Eye contact.

Well that was awkward.

Look down quick as a hummingbird and

Wish I had some nectar since licking books leaves one

Thirsty.

Silence. But

Out of the window is an explosion of green, set

Off by that temptress, Mother Nature, and

The shrill chirping of birds pierces through the

Glass.

Yes, I can hear them.

Yes, I am still here.

Surrounded by a monotony of beige

And a pile of assignments.

And maybe, 
like, 
twelve other people.