WEBVTT

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This poem is called,
"When I Was 15."

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I was asked to write a
poem for a 15th anniversary

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of an organization called 826
Valencia that tutors kids.

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And I took this
assignment very literally.

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So I wrote this poem.

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"When I Was 15."

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When I was 15, I suddenly
knew I would never

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understand geometry.

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Who was my teacher?

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That name is gone.

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I only remember the gray
feeling in a classroom

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filled with vast
theoretical distances.

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I can still see odd
shapes drawn on the board

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and those inscrutable
formulas everyone

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was busily into their
notebooks scribbling.

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I looked down at the Velcro
straps of my entirely white

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shoes and knew inside me things
had long ago gone terribly

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wrong and would continue to be.

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When the field hockey
star broke her knee,

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I wrote a story for
the school paper,

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then brought her the
history notes in the snow.

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She stood in the
threshold, a whole firelit

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life of mysterious familial
warmth glowing behind her,

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and took them from my hands
like the blameless queen

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of elegant violence she was.

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Walking home, encased in
immense amounts of down,

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I listened to the analog
ghost in the machine

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pour from the cassette
I had drawn flowers on.

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Into my ears, it sang,
everything they told you makes

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you believe you're
trapped in a snow globe,

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forgotten in a dark closet,
where exhausted shadows argue

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what if sorrow
cannot become joy.

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But I am here from the future
to tell you you are not.

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All you must do is stay asleep a
few more years, great traveler,

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waiting to go.

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That was how I felt as a kid.

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I was like just stay asleep.

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And soon, you'll be in college.

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