The copier is broken
again, or sometimes
it isn’t,

the teachers never
know until we try.
I need copies

of a poem for
today’s lesson,
so I rub my

flash drive like
rosary beads as I
enter the confessional,

where, in the dark,
two girls are crying
because the boy

died two days ago,
homecoming night,

on the way to pick up
his date for the dance.

What’s true is
our school hasn’t
offered space to grieve,

so our students find
broken places to mend.

One girl hides her face
and the other
is terribly inadequate

at consoling:
reciting facts
to make the crying stop.

He died and he was your friend.
That's death, you know,

sometimes death just is.

I know a teacher’s
words will end
this peace, so leave

to find them Kleenex—
but I’d much rather
apologize for

how much is
is to come, for everything
life has done to them

and will continue to do,
for how much
desperation exists

in this small room
where nothing works
most of the sometimes,

where I pray or curse
each morning

as I press a book’s spine
to glass and beg
for ironed petals or

for any goddamned
daylight born
from these pages.

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Jean Prokott is Poet Laureate of Rochester, Minnesota, and her poetry collection The Second Longest Day of the Year won the Howling Bird Press Book Prize. She is the author of the chapbook The Birthday Effect (Black Sunflowers Press), is a recipient of the AWP Intro Journals Award and of the League of Minnesota Poets' Grand Prize, and she has work published in Verse Daily and Rattle, among other journals. She can be found online at jeanprokott.com.

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