Colleen M. Farrelly

Recess

Every morning, it’s the same routine. Get up. Grab the lunchbox and backpack. Run out the door to make the bus. Sit up. Shut up. Pay attention. Why isn’t the assignment done? Pay attention. Stop looking out the window at the field bathed in June sun. Put that book away. No talking. Pay attention.

The clock affixed above the blackboard ticks slowly, demonstrating another type of relativity.

a lone notebook
abandoned in the hallway –
recess roadkill