There is definitely poetry walking down this hallway,
with its off kilter child-colored walls,
its calmly patterned blue carpet,
and its skylights that gently smother students, its victims, in a haze
of fuzzily read textbooks and furrowed brows.
It’s the kind of hallway that you have to run down at a full sprint
when you’re late to class;
you can feel the seconds dropping beneath your feet
as they pound against the stretching hallway
and you strain to make it there on time
because you’re late to the only teacher that will care
and your books are flying everywhere
and your expression screams
“Get out of my way!”
But despite your best efforts the bell rings,
and you still haven’t reached the end of it.
It enfolds like a bad dream.
“You’re tardy”.
But I was in the hallway!
“Go get a note”.
I ran straight here!
Down this never ending hallway
on this never ending day
when all the skylights seem to suck the air right out of this place.
And all you want to do is push them open
and step outside for a breath of oxygen because
you are suffocating in this hallway,
this cramped, claustrophobic corridor
with its wide open windows
that taunt you.
As I watch,
a pack of people walk down the hallway.
Shoulder to shoulder,
they walk over each other’s feet on the way to class:
pushing, laughing, shoving.
I think they have more room than I do
to think.
