we rode a fever out of Boston.

How is it I keep finding myself in this moment,
the many years after graduation?
I am in a waiting room and the only lights
flicker from a dusty office.
This building will be abandoned soon.
The secretary calls my name anyway,
and I have no idea how many times
I've done this before.
Something worries me, more and more.
Biology, I think, or chemistry,
I don't think I've taken yet, and all the while
what have I been doing?
I approach the ancient lady terrified
my application is incomplete -
"But listen," I tell her, "all my hours are there."
And now I'm begging her to think I'm ready,
like how I try to tell the cute boy outside
that I'm happy where I am, or at least complacent,
and doesn't he know that I'm a sucker for that look?
But, no, she's weighing in my credits, in one manicured hand
and then the other, and before I know it,
I'm in that room again, sifting through papers without dates
and wondering, all these years, what it is I have done.