Dark Corners
Location
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.