The Day I Knew My Days Left Teaching Were Fewer Than the Fingers On My Hands

It's inside me, growing. A parasite, a black hole, it sucks light from my cells, hope from my heart. It is heavy. Heavier than lead, than iron, and it pins me to the bed or chair or wherever my body has settled to rest for a minute. Today, it told me that the door I thought would not yet close, was closing, and I knew. I knew I could not go to the meetings that make my head spin. I would teach. For that I am strong enough to fight still. The students are so beautiful and they look to me, sometimes bored and irritated, but other times for what it is an older person who loves language might offer them. I want to tell them about the closing in, the weight pressing down, but I never will. The mass of it is too much for their young shoulders. Another day, I say to it. Another day. It has not yet grown so big that it can take that away. I will never again meet students on the second day of spring, the day it grew warm while the sun made lovers think of blue water.