I threw away the letters my students wrote to me.
Sliding into the trash went the good-bye- for- the- summer letters they wrote
after finishing their exam. I heard
small voices begging for salvation as the fistful of paper spiraled from my
hand. I hoped there were no witnesses
to my sacrilege. I threw them down
hard. I had read each one. I read them and I read them. In bowed-head reverie I let their words of
gratitude enter my heart and stay there long enough to leave a mark. I could not keep them for they were already
echoes of a door that closed. Over
these eleven years I have always destroyed such evaluative cards and letters at
year's end, such crumpling is a practice in nonattachment. As close as I have held them, I must let my
students go. They will belong to
someone else next year and I will have new eyes looking into my face, wondering
if I will be completely theirs. I must
be destroyer and preserver, like Shiva, letting go of the past to create again.
My classroom is hollow now, a discarded cocoon where
the creature emerged and spread wet wings.
The last bell has rung and only teachers in their summer shorts and
flapping sandals pass in the halls.
Many of them are anxiously ripping student posters down and shoving them
in the recycling bins ?.my students' posters still hang from the walls. They, too, are haunted with ownership, the
spirits that breathed, the voices that rippled, the souls that spoke from
different places in the empty space. I
am not so quick to remove the gallery; too much closure for one day. Why is it that I discard what others would
keep? For that matter, why do I cling
to what others trash?
As I inhale the emptiness of the room I see that the
desks have invisible owners for a while.
The shapes of their former masters hang with specks of chalk dust in the
columns of floating sunlight. The
yellow light enters these old windows with a sadness clinging to it. I remember how the light changed suddenly as
they left. One moment I embraced them sunflower and buttercup, the next moment
silence bloomed to pale ochre. I will
rearrange the desks next year over the imprint of the old, over old graves that
don't quite sleep. Previous spirits
will seep through as the fall term begins.
A piece of hair will move along a forehead, a whisper breeze will
feather along arms and neck in leaning chin upon a palm? something intrudes
but: "What was that?"
not the wind, not the wind.
I remain in the room alone, feeling the end and
measuring it. If they return it will be
as solitary visitors, or in pairs. They
might ask about the past or show me sun-polished faces bright with new
backpacks, notebooks and pencils, photographs of summer trips, hands holding
new love, schedules with new teachers' names.
They will be parts of what was once a whole, a magic circle, a secret
cult, a happening. I brace myself for
that fragmenting. With my eyes closed I
see them as I have arranged them, strength next to weakness, confidence always
in the back, those who need protecting nearest to me, all deliberate, nothing
ignored. I rehearse each class in my
mind as if they are cards that I pull from some immutable deck, then I shuffle
them back into years of time. They are
behind me.