Sandy High School - Mee Ma Yearbook (Sandy, OR)

Page 14 text:

The Lockers In an empty school building I sit, look at lockers, wait for inspiration. I fall asleep. I awake to a night illumined by bright dancing moonlight. The air, exhiliratingly crisp, lit with the night-magic of a full moon. Moon-fog twists and vapor-mists, forming.........ghosts. Locker-spirits, embodying portions of spirits of people passed. People who have left us because luck just wasn’t with them on that tight curve, or because the other guy was over the center-line. Because their hunting partners weren’t REALLY safe hunters like the shoulder patch said. Because they wanted to know what was on the other side and couldn’t wait to find out, or because life was just too hard to take, so they took their own lives. Many of the faces are clear, but the names need not be mentioned; they are too close in time, the memories too vivid, too fresh, too clear. Lockers, containers of life, capture a few strands from the stout ropes of our lives. At the end of another school year, we remove all physical traces that we occupied these lockers, carrying with us our locker-spirits, to next year’s lockers, unless fate dictates that one of us falls. Leaving behind only the locker-spirit, liberated when he or she dies. Greg Skelton