Day 15: Half way!

April is half done! This means only 15 more poems. I admit: as much as it’s liberating, it’s forced even more. So much like school.

Challenge 15: They suggest “writing a poem in which a villain faces an unfortunate situation, and is revealed to be human (but still evil)”. So back to school it is.

Forget about Disney for a while.
Our useless but power-feared teacher
of native tongue
on our last day of high school
– wine and cards all out already –
wanted my answers to his questions
for a fucking grade.
He got none
on principle.
His decision was to lower the final score
in my report, which reduced
my university chances.
Never mind that, got in, didn’t finish.
But I was angry for whole two days
and a half.
And then the best holidays started.
The next time I saw him
must have been 15 years later
even though he was old yet when he taught me
nothing.
I burst into a room
of an inn
in a little town in southern Slovenia
where wine is grown
to where I gravitated at the time
followed by my posse.
He was sitting there
alone
eyes glazed over
nursing a litre.
I’m not sure he recognised me
since I withdrew
the moment I saw who he was.
I was tempted to go back
to clear out some mud
but then thought better of it.
Nahhh.
That lonely glass
serves you more right
than I ever could.

Ljubljana for holidays. Where I walked home from high school, often.