Directions to Your College Dorm by Faith Shearin

Poem of the Week, by Faith Shearin

Twin Citians! I’d love to see you at Truth Be Told, an evening of live storytelling to welcome the fall. Date: Sunday, September 27, 7-9 pm Place: New City Center, 3104 16th Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55407 Theme: Stellar storytellers sharing true personal stories on the theme of “Connection” Cost: Free! A goodwill offering will be split between the storytellers and Sisters’ Camelot, a local food justice nonprofit

Most nights now I sit on the floor for a couple of hours, surrounded by old sagging boxes, reading all the letters and cards I’ve saved from high school on.

I’ve avoided this job for decades. It’s always felt like too much, too much, too much. Then I randomly decided to call it the Gratitude and Blessings Project, and a switch instantly flipped. Oh my beautiful friends, here you are again, with your inimitable handwriting.

Look at the thousands of letters, no exaggeration, from my word-loving mother, and the few from my non-writer father, like the one on yellow legal paper in which he “wholeheartedly endorsed” my plan to become a novelist. “If it doesn’t work out there are a zillion other options and you will find them, Alison.” Astonishing words from a Depression baby who wanted only stability and security.

All these decades-ago missives, full of secrets and dreams and longing and laughter. All our young selves shimmering up from the pages. All the times and ways we loved each other, all the hallways that lead back to those rooms.

Directions to Your College Dorm, by Faith Shearin

All hallways still lead to that room
with its ceiling so high it might have been

a sky, and your metal bed by the window,
and your crate of books. First,

you must walk across the deep
winter campus to find your friend

throwing snowballs that float
for years. Then, open our letters:

shelves of words. You will find
our coats, our awkwardness, the tickets

from the trains that witnessed
our confusion. Love was the place

where we became as naked
as morning; it was dangerous and

dappled and we visited its shores
with suitcases and maps from childhood.

I remember our shadows growing
on your wall while a candle

swallowed itself. You kept a single
glass of water on a desk and it trembled

whenever we danced.

Click here for more information about Faith Shearin.

alisonmcghee.com
Words by Winter (my poetry podcast)

Poem of the Week, by Faith Shearin

Posted on July 29, 2023 by alisonmcghee

Click here to peruse our summer and fall one-day online writing workshops. I’d love to see you in the zoom room.

There is a town in North Ontario
Dream comfort memory to spare
And in my mind I still need a place to go
All my changes were there

College is the place I go in my heart when I need a place to go: Maple leaves ironed between wax paper. Mountains turned to flame in the fall. My mailbox for four years: 2947. My i.d. #: 84337. Blue sky winter afternoons. A narrow bed with a blue wool blanket. A library carrel. The language lab, headphones over my ears. Dancing at the Alibi. Chinese characters written over and over and over. The boy who wore the army jacket and set up a shrine to John Prine in his dorm room. The girl who laced her hiking boots with red laces.

For me it was college, but it doesn’t have to be. A person, a place, an experience, a single moment: and suddenly the roof of your life lifts off and blows away.