Acquaintences

Jonah G. ‘27

1.

Could I have known you? I feel like I once did. I see your face on every sleepless night. It’s been a while since I’ve thought of you, and then, I saw you in a place I don’t remember.

2. Could you have been a friend from childhood? A friend from long ago that I’ve forgotten? One I ran and laughed with many times? That I let go, thinking, not again.

3. I seem to see that you were saying words that I had once remembered every day. And now I can’t remember what they were, if it should be the last day of my life.

4.

There are no others that I love so much, but I can’t recall what I once loved. How did we separate so long ago that I have forced your voice from my recall?

5.

Could I have known you? I remember now, a few things. People blur like leaves before the storm.

And sitting quietly without a care, I saw your face smiling beyond the grass.

6.

I run over to where you are sitting and ask you if you could remember me. You smile and turn, looking at my eyes and answer my question, with wonder in your eyes.

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7.

“Yes I knew, but I had long forgotten what it was like to behold your face; but now I see you, and everything comes back –how we had once spent our lives together.”

8.

“Yes I knew you, and I have not forgotten how you cast me off like rotten meat.” You leave me wondering every sleepless night why you and your face made me remember you.

Slim, dark shapes rounded by time, silhouetted against the blank, blue-gray sky. The glossy black feathers flow together in a smooth, fluid stream.

Beady black eyes seem to gaze beyond the ever-drifting horizon— where cloudy dreams and misty wishes linger aimlessly. An airy plume of hope wanders—a glint of light— a flash of smoke, and all is gone. And still they wait, perched on a tallest tree, austere and expectant. They know what fate does not. Not a caw resounds through the crowd, though hundreds stand stiff. Something in the air ripples and unfolds, for even silence has its echoes.

Josephine M. ‘29

This poem means nothing, but it also means something because before, I was bored and now, I am not. So someday, we’ll learn that we’ll never be bored. There’s too much to do and not enough time. So close your screens, and open your eyes, because before, this meant nothing, and now, it means something.