xi

“In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might beware my power, Green Lantern's light.”

- Oath of the Lantern Ring

            After looking for my Senior Ring for the past month, I finally found it stuck in between the cell-phone/deodorant-stick vinyl pocket of my middle-school backpack. Call off the search parties, I guess.

            For some reason (I’m approaching Mordor, probably) it seems heavier than it was at the end of May, weighing down my right hand with its faux-metal engraving and fake semi-precious black rock. And after the end of the month, I will probably  never will wear this ring again, this staple of every outfit that I have worn since two long Decembers ago.

I

Childhood died that night,

warmly and calmly suffocated under black robes of Academia.

It was mourned for only a moment,

in between the flashing grins of family cameras and

the gulps of a warm, new air of

rebirth.

And I cried

unashamedly.

Through wet stains on my eyelashes

I remembered the boy I was,

eight years before,

thick glasses of naïveté

obscuring a framed world.

But now?

Now I could finally see.

            When I lost the ring at the start of the summer, I was distraught (big word.) I turned our poorly-air-conditioned house inside-out, flipping drawers filled with 90’s action figures and old poetry notebooks, under pillow cushions and carpet stains.

            I miss high school. I miss my forty brothers, the white-boards filled with formulas that I did not pay attention to, the familiarity of the compost-incense campus. I miss it all.

And I was so eager to leave.