It is no small thing to be
granted this time, to walk

into a long-ago classroom alive
in your mind, slide onto a hard

wooden chair attached to
a round-bottomed desk, open

the Formica’d lid, and pull out
a nearly full notebook of

swollen sheets brimming
with your words.

When it is full, you give it
to a classmate—not necessarily

one who understands how much
you live your life on the page—

but to someone who might
happily receive whatever they

find in your stuttering cursive,
which, decades later, you,

perennial student, wish you
could again hold in your hands,

run your fingers over loopy ink
poured from a young heart

onto paper, this slender
volume of you.