WEBVTT

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I'll try to rescue my--

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what I just did to any
children in the audience

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by reading this poem.

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It's called "When I Was 15."

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I was asked to write
for this anthology,

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like it was the 15th
anniversary of McSweeney's.

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And so they were
like, write up a poem

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about-- write something
about when you were 15.

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So I took this very literally.

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I grew up on the East Coast.

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And so I mentioned
down, down coat.

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Yes, you guys, you have
to wear down coats here,

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because of mountains and stuff.

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Sometimes I read a
place, like what is down?

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What is a coat?

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"When I was 15."

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When I was 15, I suddenly knew I
would never 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.

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Everyone was busily into
their notebooks scribbling.

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I looked down at
the Velcro straps

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of my entirely white shoes,

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And knew inside me things had
long ago gone terribly wrong

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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'd drawn flowers on.

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Into my ears, it
sang, everything

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they told you makes 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 is 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

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traveler waiting to go.

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