new apartment

Back to school should have a briskness to it,
new notebooks, cardigans and shoes that rub
the backs of your heels. These days its all
heat humidity, old three-ring binders, tank-tops
and flip-flops. And whatever happened to apples?
All the grocery stores have are tense Mexican peaches.
In third grade, I never would have started school
without books. Now, in the rush to move boxes,
my forty-three course texts sit lonely in the bookstore,
held under my name. I miss Anne of G.G., to be honest,
as I set rows of L.M. Montgomery next to Chaucer,
Hemingway, Vonnegut.
Still, there is something about the start of classes,
untouchable by nerves or familiarity or boredom.
Still, there is something about school.

So this is my back-to-school photo, since we don't have them anymore in higher education, taken by my sister in sunny Southern California, which seems far away now.
Bisous, bon chance a toi et a moi aussi! It's a new semester.