previous
 
 
 

Reunion Weekend
Not only was she secluded from her family and the community, but an attempt was made to seclude the world from her.
Thirty years later, drunk on red wine, they will return
to wander the halls, searching for a certain
 
room, its window still memorized – will delight
in finding through familiar panes the moon rising
 
just the way it had when they'd lain sleepless
beneath it. But they cannot return to the twin bed,
 
long assigned, reassigned to some other
possibility sick for home, another
 
disappointment – the room itself practicing
what they will have come to prove cannot be finished.

Editor's Note: ‘Environmental Awareness: The Right Whale’, ‘What They Are Missing’, ‘Physical Education’ and ‘Reunion Weekend’ are from a sequence entitled ‘All Girls School’. The epigraphs are from the chapter ‘The Seclusion of Girls at Puberty’ in The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion by Sir George Frazer.