High School Reunion Poem by Hannah Everette

When we come together
it is never to talk of our glory days
(there was glory for some people?
they’re the ones that don’t show up, I guess.)
It is always to remember how
Mrs. K gave too much homework
and Dr. J would wheeze when he laughed
at his own jokes—never ours—
and how Ms. P collected
cat figurines, which she placed around
the library so you always felt a thousand
eyes watching you chew your gum
and stick it underneath the round table.

It is always to remember how
in gym there were these yoga days
when we had to stretch into impractical
shapes and then hold:
one. two. three. four.
release. And how everyone laughed
at the faces the others made
like we were all pregnant women counting
breaths except that we’d had enough sex ed
to know not to get that way (maybe) .

It is always to remember how
on the last day some people cried
and no one understands why they did
(not even the ones who said they did)
and Robert L. got his diploma and then
dropped his pants, shouting the F-Bomb
at Principal H. No one laughed then
and no one laughs now—Robert L. never
came home from where they sent him;
his parents thought the navy would
straighten him out.
But then the mood goes down so
someone remembers how Niki C. once
brought a pig to school and let it loose
in the halls with a banner tied to its back
“Exchange Student.”

When we come together
It’s always to talk of those days
and those things, like they happened
yesterday even though none of us would
fit into our school uniforms anymore
and all of us have moved away to other
places and frames of mind.

I wonder what would happen if one time
when we come together we would talk
about politics, religion, the world or
maybe ourselves as we are now.
Would that change us?

(I wonder what would happen when we
come together if once when we'd been
in high school we had bothered to
talk about any of those things.)