make-up work

Hey Miss Chang,
just saying hey
and Im doing fine,
I hope to start
walking + to come back
to school soon,
tell everyone hey
and that I miss
them alot.

with
(heart)
G.B.

I groaned when another paper arrived, and I was just going to slip it into the back of my "to grade" folder, to put off until grades were due at the end of the semester. But I caught sight of her note, she who was noone's friend, who hated being at school, and who was hard to love. A reminder that I don't have "just a job", although sometimes I've become an automated machine. Staring at G.B.'s note, this is probably the most attention I've paid her. I imagine her confined to a bed, going stir crazy, bored. I need to write back, I think. My note could be like the mail to any person who has ever lived alone, feeling like a stranger to a town that she's inhabited for six months, far from friends. I could matter.

What a crazy job.