To His Own He Returns

he keeps coming back with the years, to this campus that used to know him, that now obviously remembers him not, like a restless dog haunted by a place where it vaguely recalls having buried, so long ago, something truly precious; he says to himself, so condescending, "If only they knew who I was in this school, I was student leader, essay-writing champ, heartthrob of the loveliest, I was so cool," but how some of the kids, as they rush ahead, look to him like absent classmates, long dead.