Somebody's red sweatshirt turned
a whole load pink again, and nobody
will claim it, so it waits on the folding table
like a dog at the pound.
The dryers talk among themselves,
every one of them lying about how long it will take.
I have a quarter and a paper due at nine
and a sock I don't recognize,
warm as a hand, which I hold anyway,
because it is two in the morning
and it is the warmest thing in the building
that doesn't want anything from me.

She types in capitals
so I will know she means it.
Every message starts DEAR NELL
and ends LOVE, MOM, in case
I have forgotten who she is
in the three weeks since she pulled away
from the loading zone with her hazards on.
She tells me the maple has started turning.
She tells me the cat sleeps on my bed now.
She tells me she found the button
that makes the letters small
but she doesn't like it,
it looks like whispering,
and she has never once whispered to me
across four hundred miles
and she isn't about to start.

The card-swipe lady at Tillman Commons knew my name before anyone else on campus did. It's printed on the card, so it isn't a magic trick, but in the second week she said, "Evening, Rebecca," before I'd even gotten it out of my wallet, and I almost cried into the salad bar.

Her name tag said LOIS. She kept a transistor radio next to the register, tuned to the oldies station, and sang along under her breath to songs that were old when my parents were young.

I ate at the table by the tray return because nobody sat there, because it was by the tray return. You learn a lot at that table. You learn that the lacrosse team takes three desserts each and eats one. You learn that the dish belt jams every night around 6:40 and a guy named Ferris has to climb halfway into the wall to fix it. You learn that you can make a whole dinner out of cereal and the waffle iron if the entrée is something called Pasta Primavera Supreme, which it is on Tuesdays.

My roommate had friends. She had them the first day, as if they came with the key. I had a meal plan: nineteen meals a week, and I used every one of them, because I was afraid that if I skipped one I would skip them all and just lie on my bed listening to the pipes knock.

In the fourth week Lois said, "You're a regular," and I said I guess so, and she said, "Regulars get the good trays," and handed me one from under the counter that wasn't cracked. It was a small thing. It was the biggest thing that had happened to me in a month.

In the sixth week there was a girl at my table. She had a textbook propped against the napkin holder and was highlighting everything, which meant she wasn't really reading it. When I set my tray down she looked up like I'd caught her at something.

"It's by the tray return," she said, as a warning.

"I know," I said. "It's my table."

She thought about that. "Can it be a shared table?"

We didn't talk much that night. She was from Duluth. She was in my Western Civ lecture, three hundred of us in a hall built for two hundred, so of course I had never seen her. She didn't like the waffle iron. That was all right. Nobody's perfect.

On the way out Lois looked at the two of us over her glasses and didn't say a thing, just went back to singing along with her radio.

By November there were five of us at the table by the tray return. We had names for everything. The dish belt was the Beast. Pasta Primavera Supreme was the Tuesday Situation. Ferris, when he climbed into the wall, got a round of applause.

I still get the good tray. I don't know how Lois knows, in the middle of the dinner rush, which one of us is me. But she does. She always did.

The professor says nothing ever really touches,
that the atoms of my elbow
and the atoms of this desk
push each other off at the last second
like shy people at a dance.
Two rows down, a boy in a gray hooded sweatshirt
has been asleep since friction.
Outside, it is the first cold morning.
I write down everything she says
and think about my grandfather's hand,
how I would have sworn it touched mine.

Every town out here has a water tower
with somebody's name painted over somebody else's.
My brother drives with one hand
and changes the radio with the other,
hunting for a station that will last
longer than a hill.
We have not talked about Dad since Blairsville.
We will not talk about him until Ebensburg.
Between them there is a diner
where we will both order the same pie
without meaning to,
and laugh,
and that will have to count as talking.

The library closes at ten. At 9:55 the lights blink twice, which is the librarian's way of saying please, and the whole third floor stands up at once like a congregation. Nobody has finished anything. Nobody ever finishes anything at 9:55. We put on our coats in the blinking light and look at each other, forty strangers who have been breathing the same warm air for three hours, and for a second we all know it, that we were in here together, that we are about to go out there alone. Then the lights blink again and we file down the stairs, and somebody holds the door, and the cold comes in, and that's it, that's the whole story, that is what I wanted to tell you.

One flip-flop, left foot.
A mug of tea that became, over a long weekend, a science project.
Her calculus book, open to the same page since Labor Day.
A note that says SORRY ABOUT THE MUG.
A second note that says ALSO THE FLIP-FLOP.
Her laugh, at 1 A.M., on the phone with her boyfriend in Ohio,
which comes over the line of tape on the carpet
as if the tape were not there,
which I have started, I am sorry to say,
to listen for.

Everyone is out on the quad today.
Somebody's stereo is propped in a window.
The frisbee keeps landing where it wants to.
We know it's the last one. Nobody says.

Somebody's stereo is propped in a window
playing the same tape since lunch.
We know it's the last one. Nobody says.
The maples are holding their breath.

Playing the same tape since lunch,
the afternoon won't flip itself over.
The maples are holding their breath.
My shadow lies down beside me, longer.

The afternoon won't flip itself over.
The frisbee keeps landing where it wants to.
My shadow lies down beside me, longer.
Everyone is out on the quad today.