Ad Vitam Paramus (tanka prose)

I still can see my fingers pasting bits of dyed eggshell onto the pencil sketch in my notebook. The history teacher, Mr. H., had turned his nose up at my first depiction of the Bayeux Tapestry. I'm not yet eleven—am new to this school, new from America to this strange little country. I don't understand the point of immersing myself in studies of bloodthirsty conquests, brutal monarchs, black plagues, and the like. Or spending time on related artwork.

graffiti
etched onto old desks
by many hands—
how English becomes
a foreign language

Fresh from university, and one of the few men ever to set foot in our hallowed school, poor Mr. H. also was required to teach us long-dead Latin. Decades later, memories would surface, popping up as posts on Facebook walls. The way he stood errant students on desk chairs and hurled chalkboard erasers at them (threatening the most recalcitrant students with heavy textbooks). Yet how mere sightings of him, with his handsome, chiseled looks, immediately evoked giggles and whispers throughout the schoolhouse. And how one year, after the summer holidays, Mr. H. never returned. The story goes he ran off to New Zealand with a female teacher; the only detail that remains in question is which teacher that was.

schoolgirls
introduced to love,
amare,
the first Latin verb
we learn to conjugate

 Ad Vitam Paramus = We are preparing for life.

—Haibun Today, Volume 7, Number 1, March 2013