[he opens his eyes]
. . .
light
I’m so scared but
water and color and noise
. . .
[he breathes]
. . .
“There, there,” she coos. Her eyes fill up with tears. From across the room, miles away it seems, her husband smiles. He is crying, too. They stare at each other, endlessly, shamelessly, passionately, uninterrupted as the world passes between them with its movement and its action and its bed-cleaning and glove-changing and nurse-beckoning. He smiles. She smiles. Deep in the cocoon of blankets, nested inside her thin, strong arms, the baby sleeps. She looks down.
Little Us is here.
. . .
[he laughs]
. . .
look
at the sun
and the crunchy leaves and that man’s beard and that woman’s funny-looking dog
Oh, but my high school trig teacher really had it in for me, let me tell you.
. . .
[he asks]
. . .
It’s a given, really
what we long for most.
it’s to feel a feeling
so we can say
I feel a feeling!
and then think about it
for a while
and oooh that’s a nice feeling
isn’t it?
here try mine
. . .
[he jumps]
. . .
and then we feel a lot of feelings
and other things
sometimes only other things
all these other things
and we are so lost we have to
talk and get it out there and let it go and release the tension
to anyone (everyone? It’d be nice for a second, though)
and in the end we …
. . .
[he cries]
“…and in the end we find ourselves back at the beginning.”
Class nearly over, the professor hesitates. He clears his throat as if readying himself for another lecture, something on the Intricacies of His Failure in His Second Marriage. Apparently the freshman art students practice their charcoal drawings under his eyes. He pushes up his glasses, sips vodka, blinks twice.
“So what have we learned?” he asks. He sniffs. The question hangs in the air like a long-occupied but hardly-worn noose hanging over the crowd of students, unmentioned, fully noticed, shoving the smell of its rotted corpse down every clenched gullet. Its image is reflected in the tears of those in the balcony. Not a sound is made.
. . .
[he stands]
. . .
It hurts, Professor. My roommate said this class was an easy ‘A’
and you don’t understand I need to pass this class
because my mom will kill me if I don’t
everyone agrees with me
so please let me go
without forcing
me to take
the exam
. . .
[he falls]
. . .
help
[he screams]
. . .
Just give me my hairbrush so I can go back to singing.
—
This post was previously published on Medium and is republished here with permission from the author.
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