Sunday morning, Springfest weekend: a sprit of rain, and some time after ten, high heeled and weaving, purple dress not quite smoothed over hips, a girl makes her way down fraternity row.  Unshowered boys fart into front lawn sofas, drink warm beer from floating kegs, and eye her, the outlines of fantasies scrawling across the bathroom walls of hungover heads.  She must be ugly — cheeks rubbed free of base, forehead creased with sleep, reeking of Busch and stale Obsession — so her eyes train straight ahead and see nothing but a shower, and later, the sanctuary of books, a door thrown closed to sudden thoughts of semen twirling like cheerleaders toward her womb.

Thank God there is Monday, the world starting over: English class, first row, the truth and beauty of Keats.  Later, under cherry blossoms on the quad, she'll see a bright ray slip through a finger of cloud and then, there, in the middle of the sky — a big, brilliant engagement ring of sun.