Things I Learned in the Night

by Emily Byrnes

To all of my students, past and present. You are strong and smart and full of potential. You matter, always, even when you feel like you don’t.

reads Kurt Vonnegut in public but comic books at home

didn’t kill myself but it nearly killed me.

I’m just like poor Lennie. I love too hard and watch it die and never, ever understand why.

Maybe it will be ten breaths or ten months or ten years but eventually, if I just keep counting, the pain from you will fade away and you will be a tiny scar or a little mark or if I'm lucky,

And years later, Alice returned to Wonderland to find that nothing was quite the same. Because growing up and moving on can do that to a person.