Teachers and students come out of the building after the last
late night class. They’re spooked by a cop skulking around the front
doors, cellphone in hand.
In the morning, all the memorials have been taken down: the notes
of care, the posters and open letters of outrage at the university.
Chalk messages power-washed away.
The eight faded flowers duct-taped on the brick entryway—one for each
floor a student fell to his death a week before.
In my office on the fourth floor, once, in a conference—
Mid-sentence, my student looked suddenly at the window
from where he sat in a cheerful yellow director’s chair.
What? I said. A hawk, he said. I thought I saw a hawk.
At best, we get a flash. A signal from the optic nerve to the brain.
Recognition of the image in as little as thirteen milliseconds—
before the eyes even have time to blink.