“J’aime les chapeaux”
Watch four years pass by
Spent an hour at a time
In a colorful like kindergarten room
Full of twitchy teens learning
French, Français s’il vous plaît
Watch the class size whittle down
Year by year
28 turn 7
Looser reigns now
Left unmonitored
In unused classrooms, half-looking
At dialogue sheets, thinking
College next, after this
Watch kind Madame
Watch re-taking tests until...
We are wolven, lupine, running across the playground as if nothing else exists, skidding on dandelions and cracking knees into plastic slides. The games seem genetic, inherent to us. “Miss Suzy had a steamboat” not learned so much as encoded. Then wolves evolve into dogs by Pavlov’s recess bell, and dogs evolve to children in classrooms wiping stuck wood chips off of leggings and shorts.
Substitu...
It’s hard to know where I am. I am — in fact — here, and I am — in fact — gone. Their eyes are open and shut. This room is full but there is air above me, more air than I could ever need to fill my lungs. Venting in from the outside, the outside. Enough air for my lungs to breathe, enough air for my entire life. But I am not outside. I am here. And I am chained. And there is a key in an evidence b...