True Best Day
In home room that morning
I found the folded letter on my desk
informing me of my election
to the National Honor Society
Quite a thing for the 11th grade,
I later found. Perhaps even
more for a stumbling over-achiever
on some redemption road.
There had been earlier letter...
one sent home in Junior High by a man
named Yonkee, who wrote my mother
of an academic malaise in my DNA
that was most certain to inform my future.
I remember her pleading face as she read
me his verdict. And so, that 11th grade afternoon
I stopped for the mail on my way from the bus,
subtly stuffing my honorarium in the stack
That second letter is still in my desk somewhere
filed away in a folder labeled True Best Day.
Mary Jane passed some eighteen months
after my delivery, and that vanished
world now seems so remotely mine,
but her faith is summoned, sometimes,
these later days when Yonkees of the world
--see right through me--
Copyright © Craig Sipe | Year Posted 2023
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