Unable to Tame Time
for every student who ever attended
8 Mile Rock High School

out of my life and gone
she’s disappeared completely,
she disappeared abruptly

not even her name left
on register, in memory

unable to remember who she was
what I remember, haunted by since

imagine this happening with,
happening in a seventh grade

the top stream, she at the top of it
quite a bit above her classmates
intellectually as well as
taller by far than most of them,
boys as well as girls

as if she’d walk through me, go through me
to get to me, to talk to me

tall as me, an inch away, face to face,
way within my personal space

I wanted her there always
she went as far away as she’d been close,
for one heart-beating, heart-licking,
clock-ticking minute

what she said to me, I’m unable to recall
that minute though,
middle of the class, middle of the lesson,
as charged as any minute I have ever known,
have ever lived,
including or since conception


© Obediah Michael smith, 2007
4:14 a.m. 29/09/07