The Third Pocket

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The Third Pocket It is the end of the school year. All remnants of the school year are sorted, filed and ready for its annual summer hibernation. There is only one oppressing weight that continually calls and beckons for your immediate and undivided attention. Your backpack, the faithful servant whose taken the credit for carrying everything despite hanging on your back all year, sits at your feet, chocked full of useless dribble, and desperate for relief from every neat pencil and toy you found over the course of your scholarly year. You reach down, attempt to bring the bag to your level, fail miserably, unabashed by its oppressive weight you stoop and turn the backpack upside down as you sigh deeply. Extricating the accumulated contents into a mess on the floor you systematically work your way through the first pocket, then shift your attention to the second, removing from its pockets the wealth of stub pencils, erasers, and the plethora of those small bits of torn paper that, though of uniform size and unimportance, escape all recollection of origin. For three years this is an annual routine. It is only at the conclusion of the fourth year, when the trusty sack must be gutted throughout, that you notice an unusually developed girth in the backpack’s front. Having never before considered the cleaning of your glorified disposal bin, you extend beyond the previous routine, you begin to venture towards a previously concealed zipper, thick with a carnelian coating of rust, and coated in a band of dust. Weakened by age and disuse, the zipper easily slides apart, from both itself and the backpack, revealing within an apparent mystery bound to leave even itself confused. It is a virgin territory that has yet to be noticed nor will it be remembered, an anonymous ambiguity that suffices to temporarily still both the heart and the mind, ceasing and soothing for a

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