Fifteen Pages Later

The bathroom smells like a pool as I enter and I'm excited by the prospect and can already feel the spandex pressing my breasts against my ribcage. Looking in the mirror, my eyes seem already ringed red by chlorine and my body weighted achy by swimming too long.

Stepping back out, I'm met with bookcases, not wet floors, and I can't hear splashing just quiet coughs and plastic keys typing. Even the coffee shop is silent, the lights yellow and suggesting lazy summer sun.

A latte makes a quick storm. My tea is down to lukewarm and earthy sweet. I stole an extra teabag because I like it dark.

And both my wrists are broken. And the computer is humming to me. And my sister is singing suicide, like cutting your wrists is part of writing an essay. Is part of making a career. Is what being an educator is all about.

I've done fifteen pages, and have thousands to go. What they don't tell you about Grad School is that you are finally an adult. People really do respect you, and its the strangest thing to find yourself in a pub with people five times your age, conversing like you matter, like you just might have something good to say.

They don't tell you, growing up will make you less human, more figure. Less t-shirt, more suit jacket, until its a shame that a student saw you getting dinner wearing pigtails and rocking a nintendo shirt.

Hot dog lunches. Thai food anniversaries. Waking up next to someone warm, who kisses you and touches you awake. Who doesn't care that your lips are chap or your breath old, just wants to feel you. Feel you, like you aren't more or less human. Like you can't fail or achieve. But you just are, freckled, sleepy, there, hair tangled in the bed.
And I think, I need to change the sheets, but I love the feel of deep purple and couldn't settle into any other hue.
And I think, I love the feel of him and couldn't settle into any other.

Winter brings on hibernation and I bury myself beneath layers, under warm hats and the smell of pools is just a memory, The Study Of Behavior on my desk. My skin itchy with negligence.