E.J. Evans

The Counselor

I found myself sitting on a sofa in a plain white room

with the feeling of sitting on a precipice.

And entered into a long wandering dialogue with her,

as though feeling my way forward, in confusion, for weeks, months,

often wondering where I was going.

She listened keenly, as if poised to hear a voice calling out from a distance.

Some days the room felt large, some days impossibly small,

though always the same room, in the same bland light. Then somehow

I moved beyond the room, or the room left me, to myself,

open and alone. The conversation unwound gradually

into the passing years, became this long and urgent whispering,

between myself and all that is.

 

The School

Those brittle days of busyness, of rooms and hallways and dust,

inscrutable tasks, confusion, clamor of voices.

We pledged allegiance, we opened books, we closed books.

Words appeared on chalkboards,

lessons were spoken and dissolved in air.

I made myself as small as possible and lived inside my longing:

that the school might somehow be made transparent

and allow me to see all the way through to the world.

Each day I learned something and each night I forgot everything,

except my readiness to be transformed.

And after all these many years

and all the schools I have passed through, it is still all I have.