Noel Negele

For Sarri

On my SAT I doodled
pornographic sketches 
because I saw a girl student 
crying over her test form 
and it bothered me to
be amongst them, any of them,
I detested people so overcome 
by anxiety and in my most 
immodest immaturity 
I maintained that I knew not of
the feeling of anxiety.

Few years later 
panic attacks would land me
to the ER were they’d 
inject my ass with liquid diazepam 
because of my frantic heart beats.

Brought things to perspective. 

But back to high school—
those sketches bothered 
the headmaster who saw it
as an attack to the very 
virtuousness of the education system
and troubled Sarri, a theoretics teacher
and the only educator there
who had an affinity to me and a belief
that I suspect stemmed from 
the compositions I’d write that even
with terrible grades because of
the blatant disregard of the word restriction 
she’d always comment on them 
praise them even 
in front of the whole class as wonderful
in meaning alone at least.

At the back tables of the classroom 
I’d wish for her to shut the fuck up
and wondered if I’d have to start a 
fight again to authenticate the fact
I was no dork.

Sarri, who I grew to respect 
with time and even had a soft spot for
had sat me in an empty class room
to explain to me how I was crippling 
my chances with my future education 

She was trying to understand me
and I was trying to explain that
I was not interested in going through 
the hoops, that the world was filled
with educated morons and that 
if there was no passion I felt to pursue
through the appalling structure 
of their systems or societal configurations
there was no reason for me to even try 

I was turning my back to it all.

Sarri had used an Aristotle
quote then, told me
that if a man does not partake
in society, he is either God
or beast.

Surely I must be the latter 
I’d responded.

A disappointed expression on her face 
that had made me  sad to have caused

She has then asked me
what I thought to be
the meaning of life

Don’t have a clue 
yet, I’d respond 

And what about you
Miss Sarri,
what’s the meaning of life
to you?

A pause.

To love and to be loved.

This was a woman that 
was never married in her life
or possibly widowed—
many rumours in that school
but one certainty—
she lived a lonely existence.

Seen many-a times 
feeding straw cats
in night time by students,
been made fun of for this,
going psspssps as the cats
would surround her 
with their tails upwards
and she would speak to them
in a soft voice, a sweet tone

a woman who believed
the meaning of life 
to be to love and be loved.

A woman utterly alone.