of accents and ivy

I navigate the throngs of khaki shorts and long boards slightly jaded, really faded. The quad is tremendous and green and open, footballs are tossed, books are glanced at. My new girlfriend is somewhere around but I won’t talk to her, not in my sobriety at least. These aren’t sordid hipsters brimming with breakthrough like I had fantasized; trust fund princesses from a few provinces over turn the quaint city into a new playground, the kids kicked out of the sandbox filled with visible resentment.

Back to Howe Hall, back to the squalor six flights of stairs up. Lungs soothed from a recent Belmont, one of twenty-five reprieves I pay eleven ninety-five for. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday two cops are placed outside the home I share with nine hundred others. The princesses slur and pose for pictures while the officer soon to be tagged as “cute cop” grins.

There are days where I can’t let go of the city and what they’re doing back on that coast. This makes grasping what I’m doing here even harder.