Dear last week of teaching,

You seem, like, maybe two weeks overdue?  I'd say "not that I'm complaining," except, honestly, I am complaining. The semester is long. The academic year is long. If I felt like a better teacher, I would feel like wishing I had just a little longer with the students--but I don't feel like a better teacher, and I don't feel that way.

Except for you, dear student. You, and you and you and you. You know who you are. I'll definitely miss you, and I will always wish that I had just a little longer with you--at an infinitely slow pace of "just a little longer."

But as for the rest of it--the very last meetings; the proposed meetings for which I sent out e-mails a week, two weeks ago, that by now seem like a doom, still out there withholding their replies; the last class and the other last class; the layout/printing/binding; the students I'm still helping with their projects--could it not just be folded into one of those wrinkles in time you hear so much about nowadays? and in that tidy little pocket, everything still clinging to the next few days could just tumble? and I could walk right across that neat fold, into the week after graduation and onto an airplane that will take me to a foreign land?

Last week of teaching, I know you are pursing your lips at me and shaking your head. But just shut up. I am still in the middle of you, but I am already tired of you.

I renounce you. I renounce you. I renounce you.

With respect,

htms

part of a couplet. it's all I've got.