Focus was forsaken as tears clouded my vision and the kinematic equations swirled in an indiscernible black hole of meaningless markings and diagrams. Every wrong answer on my test paper felt like another slash at my heart, a dagger that would wound my unraveling skin, every scar reminding me of my unworthiness.


Every student discovers their weakness at some point in their educational careers. Yet that fact eluded me as I tilted my head to the kind physics teacher, thinking “Why? Why me? Why here? Why now?”

I heaved hot air, in and out, until I felt blood rushing to my head like hot lava burning my insides. I had to leave this inferno. My eyes darted, in agony to the bathroom pass.
Just this once.

So I grab my “pass” and I sprinted down the hallway running through the cool air and opening the door to my home.

The band room.

My band teacher had not yet entered the building and so the room that would normally ebb with the fluttering of the piccolo and the clash of the cymbals was at a state of dead silence. I inched forward slowly, knowing that every sound made in this room was utterly precious.

I opened the latches of my clarinet and just held the instrument in my hand; or rather it held me in its cool, forgiving clasp. Suddenly, I erupted, ashes and steam rushing out my mouth and a hot torrent of rain out my eyes. I felt myself drifting to the moment that I first held this wooden beauty carefully in my hand and I recalled how it would expand at the heat of my breath.


Somehow, every time I played the clarinet, all the colors of the human emotional spectrum flowed through as my voice translated to a grounded, hollow sound produced by this hollow tube. And my voice would join every other instrument in the band, forming this all powerful bomb of sound, a rush of emotional out pour of 50 people combining to produce an all-mighty release of energy. The vein of the conductor would protrude, for his hand gestures could not quantify the magnitude of passion that we all exchanged.

Yet I knew it was all in my mind as my clarinet remained disassembled, lying dormant as the clock continued to move. To think that only three minutes has passed.

I gingerly lifted my bathroom pass, standing up slowly as I was in a state of purity. My arteries became smooth rivers again, and my mind, a peaceful and holy sanctum of rational thought. I peered one last time at the music stands, the sound-proof practice rooms, and the rickety-old piano that the school budget could never replace. My home was there, would always be there, and so I sighed in relief as I followed my path back to the physics room.

I placed the bathroom pass back and quickly scuffled back to my seat. I sat down and raised my hand about those kinematic equations and smiled to see figures on the board becoming clear and logical, as black and white as the notes on my sheet music.