This poem is called, "When I Was 15."
I was asked to write a poem for a 15th anniversary
of an organization called 826 Valencia that tutors kids.
And I took this assignment very literally.
So I wrote this poem.
"When I Was 15."
When I was 15, I suddenly knew I would never
understand geometry.
Who was my teacher?
That name is gone.
I only remember the gray feeling in a classroom
filled with vast theoretical distances.
I can still see odd shapes drawn on the board
and those inscrutable formulas everyone
was busily into their notebooks scribbling.
I looked down at the Velcro straps of my entirely white
shoes and knew inside me things had long ago gone terribly
wrong and would continue to be.
When the field hockey star broke her knee,
I wrote a story for the school paper,
then brought her the history notes in the snow.
She stood in the threshold, a whole firelit
life of mysterious familial warmth glowing behind her,
and took them from my hands like the blameless queen
of elegant violence she was.
Walking home, encased in immense amounts of down,
I listened to the analog ghost in the machine
pour from the cassette I had drawn flowers on.
Into my ears, it sang, everything they told you makes
you believe you're trapped in a snow globe,
forgotten in a dark closet, where exhausted shadows argue
what if sorrow cannot become joy.
But I am here from the future to tell you you are not.
All you must do is stay asleep a few more years, great traveler,
waiting to go.
That was how I felt as a kid.
I was like just stay asleep.
And soon, you'll be in college.