“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...