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After the Joy of the Grad School Acceptance Email Dissipates. Or: On Dread

night class means wonder. means future pay-bump.
or the spring acceptance letter means i’ll see you next decade.
it’s selfish to pack up all your dinner plates and say
I’ll be back before you know it! tonight i’m feeling sentimental.

i want to believe that geese fall in love once & forever.
but that isn’t interesting. that won’t last. in class they ask
us to smash the keyboard. to reach into a bag of letters
and hand them truth. and then prove it!

my thesis is this: there are no new ways to talk about the stars.
many smarter people have taken the wonder out of the stars.
outside my window an undergrad screams this is the best night of my life! which is neither here nor there. but shows us that someone
is feeling joyful. that the possibility of joy is so near.

but i already said that wasn’t here.

Sean Cho A. is an editor. He writes and teaches in the Midwest.