Wednesday, April 12, 2023 // The Statement — 5

Canopy Magazine, a U-M student 
organization, will be publishing a 
book-length anthology of the tiny 
desk and its contents. There are 
hundreds and hundreds of anon-
ymous entries. This piece was 
written in collaboration with oth-
er members of the Canopy team.
The project started with an 
idea: include everyone. Since the 
beginning of this semester, when 
the weather was pleasant, we’d 
randomly pick a day to bring the 
small desk and chair out on the 
Diag, arranging it with a selection 
of colorful books and a mug filled 
with pens and crayons. We’d 
provide a prompt and a journal. 
The only instructions we’d attach 
were “write: a short paragraph or 
poem” and “draw: a doodle.”
Except to check up on the 
desk every few hours, we didn’t 
monitor it. Each time, the jour-
nal had miraculously begun to 
fill. There was always something 
happening: an artist sitting in 
the chair, a student leafing idly 
through the pages, two strang-
ers in conversation. Some would 
spend a good chunk of time there, 
while others just stopped in for a 
second to look, to lean in.
When we first set up the 
desk in January, we were worried 
someone would vandalize some-
thing, or steal or tell us to stop. 
But these things never happened. 
The generosity of students on 
campus was its moving force. 
“Love” was the most-written 
word, by far.

Prompt #1: the place that I love
At first, our team was only 
five or six members large, so we 
couldn’t watch the desk all the 
time. Left alone, however, the 
desk seemed to automatically 
generate care and compassion.
Some 
writers 
addressed 
the prompt directly, others only 
partly. Most writers ignored the 
prompt altogether, choosing in-

stead to pen something from the 
heart. People began talking to 
each other on the page, improvis-
ing as the day went on. 
“I love you,” somebody wrote.
“I love you more!” someone 
wrote in response.
People had written in differ-
ent languages, coming from dif-
ferent places or walks of life. 
“The place that I love was 
never a place. It was an infini-
tesimally small moment, one of 
warmth, comfort, and security, 
one with you,” penned one per-
son. “It was the travels we made 
and will make. It’s the feeling I get 
hearing your laugh. The saddest 
moment was realizing I loved the 
place that I left.”

Prompt #2. feels like a person 
I’ve met, or a strange animal
On an especially windy day 
on North Campus, by Pierpont 
Commons, we noticed the first 
interactions between the book 
and the environment. One page, 
streaked with mud from having 
fallen to the ground, bore a heart-
warming message:
“This notebook fell down + 
got picked up. So will you.”
Flipping further, the reader 
discovers a collage of strange ani-
mals: an eyeball with butterfly-wing 
makeup, adjacent to a bird out of 
a Wes Anderson movie. A paper 
plane flies over a paper crane.
Leaning against these crea-
tures, an entry reads, “not commit-
ting might be less scary, giving up 
might be easier, but if you never put 
down roots, you will never grow.”

Prompt #3. something I want to 
remember
We learned many things 
throughout the process — like to 
only set up the tiny desk when it’s 
not insanely windy. Inevitably, 
even on quiet days, a gust will 
flutter the pages, flipping them, 
threatening to pull them apart.
Between pages of crayon-
drawn flowers, caricatures, and 
a hand-turkey, a written entry 

stands alone, the letters swirling 
together in red ink. The bitter-
sweet reflection is concluded with 
a small heart, drawn underneath 
two previous attempts that were 
subsequently scribbled over:
“I want to remember your 
words. The way you smiled, the 
way you laughed at my jokes. 
The way you were happy when 
we were together. But with ev-
ery day that goes by, I slowly 
forget, but I hope I’ll always re-
member you.” 

Prompt #4. something part of 
who I am
Occasionally, people would 
band together to complete a page 
of group artwork: mural-like.
“Keep your head held high,” 
one student wrote below a series 
of tiny animals: a turtle, a singing 
chicken. On one such page, an as-
sortment of drawings interweaves 
between blocks of brief poetry. 
“When it gets dark enough, 
you will finally be able to see the 
stars,” someone wrote below that. 

Above this, beside a cool-
looking cat, reads, “Life some-
times sucks but that’s okay!”
To which another voice re-
sponded: “I agree, but we keep 
moving forward.”

Prompt #5. I see a glimpse of it 
every day
Something 
about 
the 
little desk seems to bring out 
what people are really feeling. 

 STEVE LIU
Statement Correspondent

We put a little desk on the Diag. 
Here’s what we found

Continue on page 6 of this insert.

Photos courtesy of Canopy Magazine