Room 325

Walking down the once familiar hallway,

I travel somewhere between then and now.

Rooms with unfamiliar names

Call forth echoes of residents past.

The corridor is smaller, or I am larger,

Or maybe it’s the other way around.

My travels make me dizzy.

Room 325 hasn’t moved,

And I knock with a respect that almost removes my shoes.

The same hand grasps the same handle,

Thirty-five years later,

And I peer to see a familiar sight:

A carpet of discarded clothes, towel strewn upon a chair,

Bedding ravaged by the call to a first period class,

And pristine books creating the image of study.

The room is mine, but the clothes are not.

For now, maybe forever, I will loan it to others,

Just as it was lent to me.

I close the door before I’m thought to be an intruder.

The Headmaster I knew is now a portrait,

Beloved faculty archived on the walls,

And the acned youth walk by unimpressed.

“In my day . . .”

It’s no use,

The bell rings, awakening us all to the passage of time