The Enduring Exhale

The last days leading up to commencement fell away in mute panic. A pile of thin letters sat untouched on my desk while I rifled through the motions to reenter school. And all I could think about on that heavy day, while sitting in the second row and staring at the backs of the heads of provosts and deans, was how nice it would be to get my own poofy pillow hat. By the next day, when most had long gone, I returned to campus and retraced my steps, slowly surveying the buildings and recalling the memories I held within each one. The deep calm that descended upon the grounds was unlike anything I had ever felt during the term. It was as if the campus was blanketed in the heavy calm of summer and was slumbering in its warmth. The folding chairs had all been cleared away, and the podium lay half-disassembled in the stifling grass. While birds pitched their songs from one bough to another, the sun fell slowly through the trees and scattered, becoming gleaming cutouts strewn across an earthen sky. All who had given so much life and meaning to this place were conspicuously absent. A custodian appeared here and there, ushered along by some nameless duty. Very soon, the school would shake off its slumber and open its doors for the summer session. Not long after, it would receive a new matriculating class, which would in no time at all be ushered out that same set of doors, as fresh as it was when it had arrived. I could still see the footprints of chattering families and nervous graduates in the grass. And it was as if the campus had admitted us into the world without so much as a blink of an eye. A city of blinking lights and windswept streets that had simply sighed and shut its eyes. To them, we were just one more class passing through. It was as if we were all gone forever on that day, swept away in a remorseless wind.