A Sonata of Solitude

Chapter Four: A Rhapsody of Reconnection

Beloved,
In what other lives or lands
Have I known your lips
Your Hands
Your Laughter brave
Irreverent.
Those sweet excesses that
I do adore.
What surety is there
That we will meet again,
On other worlds some
Future time undated.
I defy my body's haste.
Without the promise
Of one more sweet encounter
I will not deign to die.
--Maya Angelou, Refusal

Chapter 4:
A Rhapsody of Reconnection

"Your grades will be posted to the network portal in approximately a week. In the meantime, enjoy your summer vacation."

A cheer erupted through the class; my students were liberated.

Freedom.

I quickly stowed my lesson planner and exited the room, beginning the long trek back to the staff office. It had been the final exam of the summer term; the students now began their month and change off. They could go off and do whatever they wanted.

They were unrestrained.

Unfortunately, we teachers weren't so lucky.

The long process of marking loomed before me; gaseous, it filled the space allotted to it, ever-expanding and omnipresent. Soon, it would envelop every aspect of my life; suffocating, drowning me in its tight embrace, unable to breath. A weight pressing down on my chest, driving all the air from my lungs.

Sighing as I sat back down at my desk, I pulled the gigantic pile of exams closer to me. Every single class I taught had written a final for me, each with between twenty and thirty students.

It had long been my least favourite part of being a teacher. Something I'd paid little mind to as a student, striving to succeed on midterms and finals and quizzes and every other assessment in between -- the human aspect. The teacher on the other end of the red pen, holding an entire person's fate in their hands; capable of desolation with a single word.

It was a heavy burden to bear.

Part of it was the discomfort that came along with the fact that, with a stroke of ink, I could drastically affect how these students' summers went. Part of it was the knowledge that some of them took it as an evaluation of their entire worth, a reflection of their value as a human being. It was a reality that made me reluctant; because I also couldn't mark too high, and let someone pass who hadn't actually learned anything.

Those were all true reasons for my dislike of marking.

They just weren't the reason.

It was the tedium.

Within about ten minutes, I was sprawled out on the desk, red pen in hand, and sighing dejectedly. The oncoming week was going to be extremely slow, and painful. Turning my head to look at the large window that lined the wall, I allowed my mind to slowly wander. To step away from pages upon pages upon pages of equations and reactions and mind-numbing tedium.

It had been about three weeks since we'd returned from Okinawa.

Three weeks since the izakaya.

Three weeks since you'd admitted you missed me.

The morning after had been not so much a return to normalcy, as a state of metastability; your eyes averted, words halting. The ice in your eyes was still remarkable in its absence... but you were distant.

Frustratingly far away.

Oblique, uncomfortable, we had danced around one another, never quite meeting head-on -- and two weeks after we'd returned, finals had begun, and we were each consumed.