I call it the chute, these last few weeks of the semester with final classes and faculty meetings and graduation to plan and a four-day trip to Bard amid it all. I enter the chute and it spits me out on the other side. Truth is, there’s no time in the Free Minds year that I love more. Everything we work for culminates here. And I became fierce about quiet. Greedy. So Tuesday night, no place to be, I gather to myself cat, book, couch, silence. I hold on selfishly. Just for this moment, mine.

May 5, 2015