The Classroom

 

Whisper your broad-sweeping metaphors;

Explain how you will excite the wayward dust of the universe;

I will tell you my ordinary dream:

 

When I ran away from home, I looked for parents everywhere,

Until my graduation from high school, when

I quietly told my pancake-making physics teacher

I thought of him as a father; not to replace my father, then seven years gone,

But some father nonetheless.

All awkward grace, he replied that these four years, he had already unwittingly

Adopted me, from the moment I became senselessly infuriated with the theory

That a falling object ceases to exist at the point it passes through,

Something I thought disproved my belief in God.

 

When I ran away from home, I had already lost my opinion

In a sea of unfamiliar coat jackets

And louder voices,

Until a thoughtful woman told me my sentence crafting

Held thoughts worth sharing:

 

Speak, she said.

Write, she wrote.

And then she listened.

 

She first saw the merit of my story.

She awaited my introverted bravery.

She became my quiet inspiration.

 

And so as they taught how to disassemble a car and unpack a metaphor,

I learned to bake cookies and sew a hanging pocket and a broken heart.

I watched them raise their children and read their books.

 

I found parents everywhere when I unknowingly ran homewards,

I left with a voice.

Someday a new batch of searching teenagers will do the same.

I already listen for them.