6 22 05
1:12 pm

she wears the same jeans all summer
her gold-tipped pen fades until it's just a stain
a coffee stain on her diploma
and she sings the same songs all summer
with the same people
sitting, surrounded by thousands of handprints
old who-knows-where prints
wheelchairs full of files push past
some of those handprints are hers,
forever, until they knock it down and each
multicoloured stain on the yellowing wall disintergrates.
streetlights flash through the makeshift sunroof
one, two,
in the dead of night.
I could have listened to her all night.
She writes the same words all summer
her words are summer
they spell out here and there,
all too aware, and goodbye
and somehow, as she drives away, she's still OK
for the first time in her life
she won't walk through those doors in September
wearing the same jeans she wore
all summer.