What are electrons?

When our physics teacher died

we didn't have to do physics

anymore. The headmaster wrote

a letter to the exam board.

Equations still on the blackboard

in her handwriting in her empty

classroom. A pile of books to be marked.

The van de Graaf generator in the storeroom

and now we are excempt from physics.

It would be unfair for any of our class

who loved our teacher, the way she

spoke to about us so warmly at parents evening

the school trip to Lille, gravity

brings back too vivid a memory 

and so we float.