Institution
The weather was delivered in the form
of a novel, or a non-fiction, written to inform
some reader of a setting which was not their own;
inside, this was neither
Susanna Kaysen’s therapy center
nor George Adams’s prison
and yet I was holding onto my socks
considering
the black-white-black-white ice cream store floor
or the state of being out of the typical pattern:
an intellectual.
and there we were
parading through the hall
like ghosts on their way to breakfast.
a meal of fake eggs
and fake cheese
and no questions
no conversation.
We are children reliving ourselves.