Between the blue
lines of pale
wide ruled notebooks,
I used to draw
arrows (→)
at the bottom
of my pages
when fifth-grade
teachers still wanted
hand-written essays.
The arrows (→)
signaled there was more
to read on the back.
Turn the page!
it prompted.
Letting them know
I didn’t trust them
to flip the page over
without the arrows (→)
they’d only read one side
and mark my grade
half of what
it should’ve been.
By Jonathan Mann