seven minutes

A butterfly, dead, sits in my grey mitten hoping for revival, a second metamorphis? Words, vowels, paper shredding, tapping of feet on the wood floor and I cannot understand, any of it. Tiredness brings on a wave of existentialism.

Mind floats to warm grass and the park in another city, another country. Will I return? Is there home? Hope Of My Existance- my definition. The desk is next to the ticking time bomb that measures each class. It will ring, I will get up and I will teach something about conjunctions, perhaps a verb, and if they're lucky, an interjection or two.

The teachers are more restless than the students. They hear the ticking class massive egg timer and they are boiling, some soft, others hard, most scrambled.

My fingers have finally thawed. Several cups of brown rice green tea and spoonfuls of lemon orange peel sugar in hot water find their way to the tips that type.

Three minutes and I look outside. Bruised brown fields that match the contents of my cup. A stillness in the dirt, a settling in the trees and tuxedoed crows watch and take it all in.

I stare at your picture and see butterflies, marmalade, the licking of fingertips, and the makings of an interesting sticky story.