Last Day of School
Last Day of School
I wrote this poem about a month ago, and I recited it at Fifth Grade Night on Wednesday, June 12, and just this morning at my graduation. It is very special to me because I wrote it while crying, trying to say goodbye to my elementary school teachers.
The air is heavy
with the whispers of tears to come,
and I am light-headed, drunk
on the heady perfume of summer.
I am floating, weightless,
in this sea of people, some so familiar
I’ve stopped calling them by name
and read the tiniest flick of their eyes
as a full conversation.
Some are faces freshly placed in my head,
soon to slip into a ghost of a memory,
but the ones who keep catching my eye
without trying
are the ones who I look up to,
the ones who’ve been my caretakers and protectors
for six entire years
while I grew by millimeters and inches
and by leaps and bounds and flowers and words and words and words
and teaching
because these are my teachers.
Teachers, you are life to me.
You taught me how to let my defenses drop,
one by one,
until I was breathing in time with another
and I could let my body melt
into my best friend’s shoulder.
You taught me how to press my pencils gently,
smoothing my scribbles into vaguely elegant curves
that would shape my world forever.
You taught me how to let the words speak for themselves,
blooming into cream-white peonies
and sunset-in-a-cup zinnias
climbing across ruined brick walls, sprouting leaves
faster and faster until the wall crumbles and my breath catches
and whatever it was I was saying stops.
You taught me to turn pages like they were holy scrolls,
which they are,
studded with constellations of ink telling stories long repeated
by generation after generation,
running my fingers along the words as I tried to understand,
but never touching the paper.
You taught me to use my razor-sharp tongue
overflowing with things to say
for good,
for praise,
because words hold power, language holds rule,
and poets and writers hold wonder.
You taught me to laugh,
to breathe deep and feel the delight in the air,
to smile, genuinely smile,
to love,
to cry,
to truly see,
and today,
I am laughing and breathing and smiling and loving
and truly truly seeing
how you have made my world a paradise.
Teachers, you are life to me.
Teachers,
thank
you.
The Voice
July 2024
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