My greatest hits of grievance and affront
brought to you by the apartheid
of the university tenure system
slowly boiling me into something I barely recognized.

A fuse blew.
I took my pen and proofread my own name
in red ink.
I  promised myself that I was done or done as soon as I could get done.
No replacing that fuse, the one whose breaking showed me
how corrupt
in my heart I had become.

By the end of the school year I was done,

retired from all future faculty retreats,
retired from grievances about tenure,
and retired from that continuing,
long, slow boil of corruption.

Retired from all of it.