PittStart(ed) From The Bottom Now We're Here: A Poem

It’s finally that glorious time of the year - the sun is shining upon your soul, your air conditioning doesn’t work so you’re reduced to sitting in air conditioned coffee shops listening to bad soft rock while writing the things you plead people to chortle at, and the summer air seems to shout, “I’m alive!” It’s also that time of year when you can play the game: Spot the Incoming Lost Freshman. PittStart is in full swing, and what a better way to reflect on how far you have come since you were in that position, telling the strangers you met mere seconds ago that you’ll be “best friends forever,” and you’re “so excited to be pre-med!” than with a righteous poem.

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Pitt Pathfinders litter the Oakland streets.

“Help me find my way!” you silently plead.

You’re so lost.

It’s been years.

Ah, to be so full of joy and light and life

To have that freshman twinkle in your eye

“Freedom!” shouts every reckless and chaotic pore in your body

A sigh in a sea of nostalgia,

Drawstring backpacks scattering around

You miss the youth, when neigh a care was to be had,

When you used to fall asleep in your teeny tiny yet extra long bed (with sheets either from Bed Bath & Beyond or that weird catalog you found in the mail)

Dizzy from alcohol, and lights still bouncing in your head.

If only they could understand what the future holds

Names exchanged in circles, with fun facts and majors

Statistically speaking, pre-med has an 80% attrition rate, just saying

Barely legal adults walking around, acting so cool

“Maybe if I wear a super hipster band t-shirt

I will desperately connect with these mules,”

certain cool kids seem to silently scream through gritted teeth

and angst and desperation to escape the clutches of their parents.

Especially you, Florence + the Machine shirt kid

from her second tour, Spectrum,

brushing your hair back as you answer your phone.

You even get phone calls.

You’ll obviously have all the friends,

you’re so cool Noah, that’s right,

I read your name tag as you passed by

the Starbucks on Fifth twice in a five-minute time span.

You even have a square drawn onto your tag,

trying to prove how un-square and cool you are?

What are you up to,

meeting your cool new friends and stuff?

Huh?

Your heart wants to yell the truth at these bright-eyed kids,

Maybe one day they will understand

when they see those friends they met on the first day,

awkwardly trying to avoid eye contact.

Ah, the joy of being so naïve,

I just want a granola bar. I’m hungry.