We Believed in the End of the World
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We scrunched under the desk
where I once memorized
the lives of saints and heroes
while the teacher droned on
trying to stay calm
in the face of a bomb
that might never fall.
In that rich dark
we learned how we fitted
boy and girl,
how we were opposites
and each our own opposite.
Above us the stashed gum
of a generation of older brothers
glinted, amazingly hard:
if we tried to carve a heart
that dark sheen cracked.
We believed this world would end:
like water from the fountain
held in cupped hands,
like chalk dust or the powder
from a jelly donut.
Far away the principal rumbled on his scratchy intercom,
then nothing, the powerful swish
of traffic, silence, time passing,
the pulse quickening
as if to find a way out
and no world except us.
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