'The Mentor', by S.F. Wright
He taught
Constitutional Law.
I barely remember
The class,
But I do recall him:
Bald,
Early fifties,
Dumpy body,
Kind face.
Once,
Two boys
Moved their desks
Together,
Got a chessboard
From who knows where,
And began playing;
Mr. Romano
Kept lecturing,
Not paying attention
To the two boys.
One of our teacher’s colleagues,
Another social studies teacher,
Came in to ask
Mr. Romano something,
Saw the boys,
Said, “What the hell is this?”
The two boys froze,
Looking from
Mr. Romano to
The other teacher,
Half smiling,
Unsure if they
Were in trouble.
Mr. Romano shrugged,
Said, “I don’t know.
I guess they felt
Like playing chess.”
Most of the time
Back then
I was high;
It was senior year,
I was well on my way
To graduating into
Fulltime drug addiction.
Usually, I did heroin;
Sometimes I drank;
Occasionally,
I did coke.
One day,
After having spent
All morning
And afternoon
Doing lines
In the bathrooms,
I arrived at
Mr. Romano’s class,
Which was during
Last period,
Not only
Blitzed,
But with serious
Sinus issues.
The problem was that
I’d done too much coke,
And now,
In addition to my heart
Beating uncontrollably
And sweat streaking down
My arms,
My nose ran
Like someone’s who’d just
Inhaled a field of pollen
(Or, in my case,
About half a gram
Of coke).
Halfway through class,
I knew that I
Wouldn’t make it—
If I stayed
Another moment,
I’d have an attack:
My heart,
My sinuses,
Or both—
So, I stood
And, knowing that
My classmates—
And Mr. Romano, too—
Watched me,
I walked out of
The room’s back door,
Which led to
The baseball fields,
Over which I walked
To get to my car.
The next day,
I was in a more reasonable state;
And when I arrived at
Constitutional Law,
Mr. Romano
Glanced at me,
Barely looking away from
The board on which
He wrote something,
And said,
“Everything okay?”
I said yeah,
Mr. Romano said
Nothing more,
Class began;
My classmates
Perhaps whispered
About me,
I don’t remember.
I’ve since become
A high school teacher;
And, for better or worse,
I’ve tried
To emulate
Mr. Romano
Every single day.
S.F. Wright's work has appeared in Bourbon Penn, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, and 96th of October, among other places.