After Donald Barthelme’s “The School”

Teacher tells us nothing about their personal life. Who greets you at home Teacher? When they start a sentence with, “Well, speaking from experience…” we hold our breath. Teacher eats apple seeds all day long, picking them out of the shiny apples we leave on their desk, dumping the apple halves in a big barrel, and we bob for lunch at recess. Teacher smokes sometimes and is ashamed of this fact. Crosses the street and washes up to their armpits in the bathroom, but this doesn’t fool us. We know Teacher smokes so that we won’t. Teacher instructs us in lucid dreaming, astrology, and the meaning of tattoos. Once, they rolled up their sleeve and showed us the fading smudge on the fat part of their arm. “You know what a butterfly means right?” Teacher asked. “Transformation and / or death,” we recited in unison. “That’s right,” Teacher said and we basked in our collective glory. Teacher tells us how to sort laundry efficiently, how to survive if the parachute doesn’t open, how to darn a sock, how to tell when you’re being stalked. Teacher brings us princess cake, instructs us in the art of green almond marzipan, and reminds us to chew fennel seeds in lean times. Teacher teaches us affect theory, how to notice when we’re about to be sick, why the false gender binary of boy-dogs and girl-cats. We learn how to snake a drain, how to fight fair, how to build a fire with our teeth and one strand of hair. When Teacher doesn’t show up to class, we realize what their absence means. We graduate. We know exactly how to live.