a good book has no ending

It is one thirty when the professor says
“Write a forty-minute essay on love”
and suddenly all I can think about is
how much I hate communal bathrooms and
how the redhead in the dorm next to ours
thinks she is an opera singer and
how no one else on my floor knows how
to close a door quietly and
how I wish the salad dressing didn’t have garlic in it and
why isn’t my handwriting attractive, like Jackie’s from room 611?

It is one thirty five and I have nothing on my paper
just a question—“What is love”—and a question mark—”?”—
and the sudden terror that where I am
is clearly not where I should be
and before my parents spent all their money some philanthropist
should have come and said
look—just, listen for a minute—I’m sorry to say it,
but college isn’t for you
which would have saved everyone a lot of trouble
and now I’m going to have to pack up my new computer and my new notebook,
my vitamin pills and my retainers, and go home with eighteen
bed, bath, and beyond bags
on the New York subway, to buy some plane tickets
because what I think I’m better suited for
is raising kangaroos
in Australia.

It is one forty, maybe one forty one,
while everyone else is writing—
I look over at the paper to my left,
where Emily has two whole paragraphs
about the nature of self sacrifice and love eternal
and how love transcends this and how love defies that
while to my left Jackie’s handwriting is still mocking mine
even though I can’t read it
(and that’s not helping).

It is one forty five, probably one forty six,
when the professor looks at me,
no doubt thinking “Why is this girl not booking her
plane tickets yet,
she is wasting my time, she is wasting the kangaroos’ time,
and the aborigines’ time, and her parents’ money—
Oh God, think of her parents,
they have spent so much money,
when they could have bought a one-way ticket
to Australia,” and meanwhile everyone is writing
and using their time wisely,
and people are crossing things out and the erasers are going crazy
and everyone is eloquent and I am thinking
love is my mommy, my mommy, my mommy
and then
what does a kangaroo eat,
and how long before they are house-trained?

At one fifty one I have been wasting time not just
for twenty-one minutes but also seventeen years,
so that the twenty-one minutes of class time
seems almost negligible
when you look at the time wasted from that perspective:
seventeen years old
and I cannot possibly know what love is;
seventeen years old and I cannot write
even one paragraph on love, much less two lined pages;
seventeen years old, my first assignment, a free-form essay,
I can say anything, and here I am, looking at the paper, thinking
I don’t know anything about love, lady,
especially not in a literary context
and isn’t that what I’m here for?
Why aren’t you writing me an essay?

At one fifty five it’s pretty much hopeless because
in twenty minutes I have to run
through the rain to my physics class
to discover that I cannot actually take my physics class
so I can leave and be late to my Japanese
so I can start crying on the campus steps
and the great unmoved alabaster facefront
of the great unmoving alabaster library
can tell me it doesn’t give a word about my predicaments—
that it is wet—that it has other problems—that someone has
spilled coffee
on its card catalog and I cannot possibly understand this,
having no card catalog.

At one fifty six I realize the professor is bored out of her mind
watching Emily go on to her third page and Jackie make her j’s
like sexual intercourse,
and my blank paper yawns, and my professor yawns,
and I write “It is not that I am
less when you are gone, but rather
that I am more when you are here”
and then
this does not pertain only to people
and then
but to words and to learning as well.

Jaida Jones, “In-Class Assignment”

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    It is not that I am less when you are gone, but rather that I am more when you are here. Whoa.

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    It is one thirty when the professor says “Write a forty-minute essay on love” and suddenly all I can think about is how...

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