If Ceiling Fans Could Talk

Photography by Madeleine Moon-Chun, staff writer.

I hang from the cracked white ceiling, watching every morning unfold like a letter. I rarely see anyone’s face—only the clock’s and those hoping to find answers written somewhere above them. I have watched countless bodies come and go. My job is simple: turn the air, mimic the wind. I know that people long for what they do not have. In summer, they complain the room stifles them, but in the winter, they pull my string, let me lie still and let the dust gather. This room was not always the same. It used to be a house, an old, traditional one. Before the walls were knocked down, carpets laid. Red brick painted white, new schoolhouse. Still, I hang up on the ceiling and remained unchanged. I’m tired of being a wallflower, of making ghoulish shadows on this plain ceiling, of spinning noisily and being utterly forgotten. A typical day goes like this: I’m usually woken up at around 8:00 AM in warm months but in the afternoon in winter. I listen to the sound of the computer until the stampede at 8:30 AM of students trying not to be late. Then someone always complains about the temperature. Then sometimes I’m turned off because the heater is broken in the building (this is not uncommon). Steps three and four are repeated several times a day. On and off. Off and on. Five days a week, thirty-six weeks a year. But I suppose, in some ways, I’m lucky. I love the way this room smells like old books. I am fortunate to know the words of Wordsworth, Whitman, and Dickenson; I know Kafka and Shakespeare and Achebe; I know the secrets of writing good dialogue and what makes poetry beautiful and the utterly irresistible pull of a good novel. I know the passion of a good teacher and her students. Sometimes, after the doors lock for the summer, I think that there are worse fates than being a ceiling fan.

Madeleine Moon-Chun is a high school junior from Georgia. She is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Student Pedagogies for Social Change and the editor for the Georgia Ornithological Society’s quarterly newsletter, the GOShawk. Her debut poetry collection, Not Made of Lines: Poetic Meditations on Time, Space, & Other Matters, was published by Eastwind Books of Berkeley in spring 2024. In her free time, she can be found running with her cross country teammates, volunteering at the library, or drinking taro boba tea.