Dark Corners

Mon, 09/23/2013 - 19:17 -- kmariem

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Traveling over the high ways and the bi-ways of high school

has been a journey that I have wanted to end since it began

and tonight, when the moon’s light is the only glow that casts

in my bedroom, where it is cold and the light green paneled

walls cast shadows in corners, I can’t help but think of the good

that came from meeting people you spend eight hours a day with

because even though you begin to recognize their outfits and book bags,

their faces and bodies are always changing, boys are becoming men,

(hardly) girls are becoming women and the grouchy teachers always

get grouchier because they have seen taught other people’s kids but

haven’t had time to teach their own and are trying to find a balance

between parent and teacher and their lives are a bit darker with

every graduating class and before they know it, they are left

with crappy school board health insurance and a metal detector

on a beach somewhere in Florida, tanning wrinkly skin and going

off what they remember they heard somebody say that one time

about the tide coming up further than usual and as they search

for gold necklaces or love on white sand Florida beaches, they think

of the students they’ve taught who never told them thank you

and I do my best to take this into account when I’m kicking twigs

down the Downtown sidewalks and sipping overpriced coffee

that I can barely afford and again when I’m sitting in the classrooms

across from the grouchy teachers and when I am laughing with my

friends about ugly red sweaters, lack of boyfriends and bad grades

because all that I love tonight, cackling laughs, cheese-covered popcorn

and teenagers slipping into the cloak of adulthood—might be lost tomorrow

and I hope that I don’t turn into a grumpy teacher and I hope I walk

further than my bedroom and that when I am ready enough, the dark

corners don’t scare me like they do now. 

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