Unsettling Feelings

Josephine couldn't believe how warm the weather was in Fall here. She could wander the courtyards near the library with a thin cardigan and feel easy and warm. Back home the winds would be biting her ears and nose and the water from the well would need to have the thin layer of ice broken each morning. Josephine was sitting under a small cluster of ornamental plums and the small concrete bench donated by some long gone alumni felt a bit cold and hard for much studying. Her mind drifted from her French lesson--translating a famous poem into English--and she began a new page in her notebook with a sigh:

I think I am alone
Here I am now
Without you and them
I can't hear my lowing cow
My chirruping chickadees
And all I wish for
Is home and gone

She stopped on the last line and stared a moment, then closed her notebook. She felt like this bench. She felt cold and hard--like something that had value and meaning at one time, a thing that had thought and love poured into it and now sits alone with plum trees, growing warm and cool with the sun and night, a serving thing to be useful yet left alone. Was this school to teach her such things? Was this feeling how she would see her life unfold--a series of real circumstances that translated into her whole being? Josephine couldn't shake the creeping sensation of panic that scratched at her throat.