One more poetry class to go.

In the main-building bathroom putting on makeup this morning (because I rushed up so that I could get breakfast). As I look at my face, elongated in the glass, I suddenly remember the first time I slipped in here, almost four years ago, after an incidental late night, checking my face and marveling that I didn't look half as bad as I felt, or feel half as bad as I should, and consequently concluding that I could stay up as late as I wanted. I thought I was pretty impenetrable until I got pictures back over Christmas.

Freshman Hannah, gazing back. In a red coat, and brand-new chinos, and little black mules, with a messenger bag just-so, and fool-proof fake glasses, and that really really short hair all mussed in a hundred directions. Laughing at herself and the world because she'd just discovered there was no punishment for skimping on sleep. I'm not sure whose looking back at me from the mirror today—but she's not as optimistic about anything.

“One class more,” Ash says.
“It's ending,” I say.
“Slowly,” says Eva , looking across the lawn at the 50 degree day.
And when someone slaughters a recitation of Little Gidding in class, I decide that it's ending slowly as well.