I applied nail polish to the runs in the panty hose before slipping
them over my head. I was hunting
old lit journals to sell on the black market but got sidetracked
in the upper stacks by a vending
machine that when tipped just so expelled, in a syncopated stream, free cans
of Diet Rite. I commenced to dream.
The busses slid by outside, snatching certain fledglings into their embrace
while nudging others from the nest. Brick
empires were plastered and stacked atop stone slabs, the freshmen ephemeral
but the masonry meant to endure.
Night after night I found myself wandering naked down stark hallways,
late for a final in a lecture hall
I couldn’t find. I realized I missed school the way a kidnappee
pines for his captors, Stockholm syndrome
for alums. Some, in fact, chose never to leave, those aging ponytailed ghosts
with their wheat germ and electric cars.
To confirm, I sought out Freud, hero of my Psych 101 seminar,
finding him dozing at a study carrel.
I handed over my dreams for him to dissect, but he seemed more
intrigued by the nylons on my face,
which I’d pilfered from my mother, to whom Dr. Freud had an inkling
I might be overly attached.
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