The University

at my camp is nostalgic. Not in the way that people find pretty. It is the relic of a past we'd like to forget, embarrassingly out-of-date until 100 years from now when no one, not the most ancient of elders, can remember a time when it was new--any memories of exhilaration over the feat of its construction, its grandness and its hope of the future, have been washed out of human generations. And only when this happens, of course, will the people stare at the ancient thing in awe.

The Ivies possess the charm of the ages, but not this school. It has yet to see a time when people do not look at it with disgust. But human nature, fickle as it is, is also predictable. The cyclic rhythm exists as always; the stones will sit still and wait.


Knowing this is why I find an allure that no one else sees. I sit in a crevice I just found, a lonely cracked balcony surrounded by tress. It is circular, concrete and brick, and grass peaks out of its radial symmetry, The border has 3 steps like a tiny coliseum, as if the architect expected people to gather and talk and laugh within it.


But it looks like I've found ruins from a long-gone past, a precious artifact in decay. I sit on the brick, so no one can look up and see a strange girl sitting all alone.


I watch the sap droplets from the pines, and the ants, and the ashen cigarettes.
Creatures tweet and scutter, forgetting my lone presence.
This is a sanctuary.

One can't be rejected here, because already it's become a place that no one wants to touch.