Love Letter to Community Colleges

Why we need them now more than ever.

The cold linoleum floor was a comfort to my pale, frail, freckly 16-year-old legs, a place to ground my overwhelm and confusion as a sensitive youngster.

My black hair always pulled back, my ears adorned with something, a long necklace draping my chest.

Cement pathways etched the wavy hills of a foggy campus; heavy textbooks weighed me into my body. I took long steps looking out at what felt like a big world. An open sky, a few buildings dotting the horizon, and us students.

My first friend was Aiko; an 18-year-old student from Japan, who was in my Afro-Haitian dance class. My high school down the street didn’t have p.e., only dance, and so I had already studied the art form. I was a skinny white kid but I could move.

My goateed brother, six years older than I, wandered the cement pathways as well. I’d run into him after yoga, flirting back with all the girls who regularly followed him out of class.

The boys I met were from other countries. Occasionally an old high school flame would walk by, we’d greet with a hug.