Moonlight through a quilt of clouds
we rush before the storm
lightning, like a camera flashed
as we made it to the dorm

We shiver as we rush the stairs
to the thunderous afterboom
I survey the nights assignments
when I’m safe inside my room

We’d planned for this foul weather,
and our tempest borne confinement
by stopping for some chinese food
- it was practically a requirement.

Another college tour, another favor. This time it was an old schoolmate, George and his parents who were taking the official tour. I was going to babysit his little sister Mary (5) while they walked around.

It was good to see someone from home and sad in a way. For a moment, I had a tugging feeling, like there was a hook deep inside me and the reel was back home.

When I first saw George I remembered a time, in 10th grade, before COVID. I was leaving school early and waiting to be picked up. Twenty track boys, fresh from their daily run, were lounging, seductively around. George, in particular, in a pose rather like Michelangelo’s Adam. “***!” I remember thinking at the time.

I smiled at that long-ago tableau. “What?” George asked, he was watching me. “Nothing,” I smiled, “Just looking forward to babysitting”

Mary and I exercised to a video, had a pizza delivered and colored - crayons aren’t easy to find in the modern college environment so we used high-lighters to create delicate, watercolor-like masterpieces.

As we drew, Mary said, off-handedly, “You’re really nice,” as if the nature of my character had been in some dispute. Still, I still felt warmly complemented.

When the tour was over, we were walking up science hill toward their car and the sun was declining to sunset. “How do you like it,” George asked, confidentially, head lowered, voice low enough not to be overheard by his parents who were walking a few yards behind us with Mary. “There’s a LOT of reading,” I said, shruggingly. “but I’m keeping up.” Last year I was a junior, this year I’m in college. It seemed absurd.

How do you conjure a vision for someone of what college would be like, when college experiences are so individual? The writer's dilemma, interpreted by a babysitter.

As we reached their car, the caroling bells started ringing (5pm) from Harkness Tower.  It was the perfect send-off. Again I felt the pull of homesickness but my phone plinked and the emotion didn’t even last as long as dusk.

Broke as hell
Blue light eyes
Pity be pity see
Pushing till they pull
Color coded notes on fire
Scholar of all that is okayish
Handicapped lockjaw zombie
Swimmers in the styrian river of Dante’s Inferno
A stop sign growing in the middle of the street
Thousand yard letter grade stare
12 missed assignments
Experienced Naivete
Dementia in progress
Last year’s Amnesia
Crossing busy streets
Vegetative

“I imagine a dreamscape
crafted in fluorescence, by your words
Where no razors fall like trinkets from the sky
But a blindfold of trust comforts the eyes.
May you, I pray, feel un-alone
Though we be strangers in our own homes,
I get it.”

name,
class,
professor,
date.

intro.

i believe i am quite burnt out.

conclusion,
bibliography.

Sleep wouldn’t come, the clock hands seemed to shrug, so I decided to walk.

It was dark, the kind of fall overcast that makes a low ceiling of the sky.

Early mornings, on campus, are always solitary - students shun sunrise like vampires avoid the sun - so I got sole custody of the university. With no traffic, squirrels, birds or humans - predawn was nonchalant.

The wind, busied itself, sweeping the leaves falling in twos and threes, first left then right and finally throwing them in the air like a carefree child.

Frost on grass looked grey, then would suddenly become silverlit by the moon.

If you measure time in steps, as seconds, and then miles become hours. Soon, dawn made night morning, dew became drops, and I searched for coffee.

Here at Yale University we’re encouraged to attend these campus “get togethers” - to meet other students and broaden our circles. Some are about interesting subjects like politics or science and sometimes you get to meet famous people.

Others are concerned with less interesting subjects - like the bewildering aspects of philosophy: “Would you **** baby ****** if you had the chance - and if so - could you do it with a gun? Shoot a baby to stop world war two? What if you didn’t HAVE a gun, could you find it in yourself to use your bare hands?”

“Well,” I say, giving it some serious consideration - just to show that I’m as philosophical as the next girl - “if I had BEAR hands, couldn’t I claw him to death?”

The storm is over - no, not last week’s nor’easter - midterms. I hope you survived.

New England seems to be one, big, storm-of-the-month club. Campus is 5 minutes from Long Island Sound and I like to go watch the mesmerizing roil of the ocean when a storm’s rolling in.

The choppy hazel undulations, opaque as enamel, seem to coil-up - then suddenly slap the shoreline breakers as if testing their resolve. The wind whipped salt-water patterns, like folds of linen. The wind and salt water mist in your face feels as sharp and violent as glass shards.

The sun occasionally pierces the clouds like a knife strike only to be healed in moments. The whole scene is beautiful, immense and uncontrollable - like eating cake by the ocean. (song reference).

Went to my magwinya lady today,
she's contained at the canteens on north campus,
As she rose up her left eye was bluish ****** grey,
A lump in my throat formed not as big as the one on her face,
my eyes secreted their salty solution,
my mind quickly processed confusion,
"M-m-m-m-may i-i-i p-p-lease have five magwinyas"
She smirked at my muttered utterance as she began to fill the thin transparent plastic with the oily flour-filled *****,
I reluctantly asked "What happened to your eye?"
She responded in Xhosa reasonably assuming my common cocoa coating meant our tongues matched until I told her otherwise.
Eventually she simply said, "Fight".
I said, "you got in to a fight?"
She said "Mmm".

I went over to my banana lady and said the magwinya lady has a black eye and she casually claimed, "Her boyfriend beat her yesterday."
Confirming what my teary eyes and lumpy throat knew to be true when I saw my sweet magwinya lady with a swollen eye ****** grey and blue.

Frustrated at the nothing I could do.
Powerlessly pirched on a brown bench as the black sparrows chirped pleading for a piece of my last magwinya,
Should I tell her to escape?
Is that even my place?
How many black eyes are blotched on this bruised land i, a fearful foreigner, trace?
I'll bury my brain in my book,
somewhat cowardly crook,
I'll see what i saw but take no second look,
like a camel's head in the sand,
I'll timidly tell myself these things are just too hard to understand.