today every tree branch
and branch off of a branch
was coated in ice
that happened once in college
i wasn’t 20 yet
and campus was closed
and my parents implored me not to drive
and i’m sure i didn’t
i’m sure i stayed in
and made spaghetti with matt
or something else cheap and chock full of carbohydrates
i was twenty for a long time,
i think
arrested there
sometimes i can still look in the mirror
and see twenty-me
(it’s not with ease, i assure you, there is squinting and smiling and angling involved)
but she’s conjurable
twenty-me
the next winter,
when i was twenty
my big sister came from her college
to visit me at my college
a few days before
we would both be home for the holidays
we went to the store and bought all the things
for fajitas
fah-GITE-uhs, we would laugh
with jell-OPP-en-ohs
stuffed ourselves, i’m sure
and drank crap-beer
and the next morning rode back
to columbus for christmas break
and right before new year’s
we would part from our parents’ house
and i’d never see her again
i would see the clothes she wore
on the night a car ran her into the afterworld
i would see her reconstructed nose
on her peaceful reconstructed face
then i would go back to college
and forget everything they taught me
i took realism that year
i remember nothing of realism
i had to teach it to myself last year
to teach it to my students
and when i re-taught myself realism
not a bit of it was familiar
hedda? norah? nada.
i would flounder for years
after college
but i covered well
people would sometimes call me strong
you’re so strong
strong what?
like hedda?
like norah?
and twenty-some years after twenty
i would face a roomful
of twenties.
college faces who wonder what
of all i say
about theatre history
they should remember
do we need to know that?
they closed our campus today
because of the ice
and i worried how i would cram
theatre of the middle ages
into just two class periods
i was twenty for a long time, i think
