Her hat was perched sideways, looming over cerulean irises and thick, blonde lashes. The first thing I noticed was the luminescent sparkle, trapped beneath candid dreams and washed, azure obstacles. But dreams, nonetheless. The crimson cap perched atop her eyes gleamed. In gold, blocky letters were written: Harvard.

I never knew what first drew me to The Coop. I had gone to visit colleges before, ones close to home and ones across the country, but none consisted of the Ivy League. None had authorized me to wander so close to a fate I was mentally incapable of reaching. The crimson burned a sullen, sickening tone as I had entered, with mannequins decked from head to toe in expensive Harvard apparel.

This past summer I was granted a scholarship to study at Harvard through one of their summer programs. As I scribed away through the humbling afternoons and the bleak-ridden nights, the reward for my scrutiny never struck me as dazzling. No greater achievement in life could have ceased me from regarding this experience as mere filler. A stance on some college-level vocabulary and trivial case studies. Nothing bizarre or fanciful or mind-boggling had stricken me down yet. Nothing inevitably passionate on my account.

It wasn’t that my sense of gratitude had been diminished, it was quite the opposite. It may have been intimidation or even self-consciousness that walloped me when I first trekked the grounds of Harvard Square. As the tourists circled endlessly with their baby carriages and the homeless with their imploring hands, I was trapped in an enigma of wandering eyes searching for a destiny that would someday never come. I suddenly felt very plain in my own skin, very uptight, and not quite right enough for the grounds of the most notable institution in the nation. Out of a scrambling sensation embarked on by thousands, I stood as a rock between their path, a scouring weed transpiring into the wheaten cement. I knew I didn’t belong, regardless of the echoes of chants below me. My passion didn’t lie here. In fact, I didn’t know where it was. No home could have fostered what was readily temporary, and certainly none with a fixation as ever-changing as mine. No poem would have withstood long enough, and no string of prose alluring enough to decorate with or string along someone’s barren shoulders. No passion of mine ripened here. So, I laid myself out, headfirst.

It was my fifth day of class when I first went to The Coop. I had gone to Harvard Square before, but had never trekked far enough to make it past the horde of tourists accumulating at the entrance of Tatte. Their beaming sundresses and meringue-yellow fisherman hats had always bewitched me, with their intertwined hues of prickling, pastel pink, and lavender blinding the already scorching Boston sun.

When I finally did make it past the fizzling crosswalks and brick-laden walkways, what greeted me headfirst was a bucket-full of carmine, decor in all streaming layers, and equally transversal letters, stacked together in cream-coated blocks. The Coop.

It stood as a greeting for me. A greeting for all of us. Verdant leaves sprouted from behind the sign, leading up to the enclosed entrance right into a three-story vanity of wonders.

My first thought didn’t account for the twisted, gold-plated staircase or the embellishment of timeless Harvard decor stripping the ceiling. It was that there were way too many people here for their own good. The second I maneuvered into the so-called bookstore adjacent to Joe’s Pizza, I was looking to be winded down, particularly ready for my soon-to-be solace-filled autumn. It seemed like everybody was ready, even those who weren’t quite of age yet.

Baby strollers, periwinkle bonnets, and echoes of high-pitched sobbing tainted my eardrums, along with the same, crowded fruitfulness that had so lovingly charmed my distaste beforehand. I caught my eye on families of all sizes, as well as familiar faces from class. My classmates were holding up Harvard bears and shoving on their crimson apparel, posing eloquently in the narrowly skimmed mirror. Auburn sweaters were tossed and wispy, chalked hoodies propped over heads. I felt my back being pushed.

Underneath me were little hands gripping the sides of my backpack, trembling hard against the bodies moving around her. She must have been four feet tall at most, with her Harvard cap covering the tips of her eyelids. Tilting her head upwards, she faced me with bright, mahogany eyes and an expectant expression. A little smile peeked beneath her chafed lips, along with the brows that softened amongst the radiance of the vanities above. She blinked once, then twice, and grinned at the ceiling, grinning at absolutely nothing at all. This was where she belonged.

I didn’t know if I would ever cognize the look of passion, and if I did, I didn’t think that I would ever care enough to pause and truly decipher the root causes of it. Passion is an arduous emotion to place. But it is prevalent in any soul, advancing from one love to the next, and onto the next renowned thing.

As her little hands left my backpack and she scurried away to the nearest opening, I couldn’t help but watch her nimble step speed up as she trailed the stairways, passing by gold-plated rims and pillars of brick, all amid black and white images of the Harvard campus. The graduates from 1960 and 1965 loomed over her head, tossing their vermillion caps up into the sky, portraying a future that would likely be hers if she truly wanted. She was skipping steps now, gripping the scarlet carpeting with her tiny fingers. Climbing up, and graciously trekking towards the top of the rock.

I was getting pushed again, elders and teens and all sorts of baby carriages crowding my heart. The moment had passed, yet again. The futuristic insight I had once placed had diminished, right beneath the soles of my feet.

She was at the top now, gleaming like a disco under shaken lightning. Her eyes streamed over the store, glancing at every booth, every register, and every person to pass through the harbored essence of ardency. Her eyes found mine again, and just for a moment the clear-water blues I held for such a small, homey part of Boston withered to nothing, and just for a moment, I recognized my passion.

I pulled out my phone, opened my notes app, and began with a title.

An ode to poetry: What is your passion?