This is a Classroom | Macksimillian Topinka

MACKSIMILLIAN TOPINKA

Here, where I sit, in sweatpants and a tank top, an outfit I would never wear in any other situation, is a Classroom like no other.

This Classroom has boxes. Big, green U-Haul logos and cardboard marked “Fragile,” as if it matters, as if they plan on going anywhere.

This Classroom is littered with toy swords and tiny blue sneakers, reminders of my nephew and his running smile of excitement as his Deux has come home.

This Classroom has a bed and a table and big, red leather armchairs. It is filled with soft spots to rest, as if I weren’t here to do work.

This Classroom has temptation. The acoustic guitar in the corner that I can’t even play calls to me because at least it isn’t the dreaded Italian “synchronous meeting.”

The red plastic drawer in my closet screams for me to take its pliers,

its rings, its tutorials, and to craft yet another useless keychain that I can’t even sell without having a postman’s welfare on my conscience.

The bed is a block of memory foam on the floor that has become my safe haven, the cure for my depression and the answer to the ever-present question of how to pass the time.

The room itself is an organized mess that I’ve taken care to reassemble five times already and probably will at least five times more, just to avoid the inevitability that is my schoolwork.

My straight As have been reduced to Bs and Cs because the people in charge are too stubborn to recognize my needs. They insist on continuing classes despite the desperation of my pleas.

So where does that leave me?

Struggling and failing to survive in this pandemic world order where so many Die and not enough Thrive. I am grasping at coattails and trying my best but Surprise, Surprise, my best is not good enough. Not up against the news and the lies.

This is a Classroom of ill intentions and microaggressions. Of busted webcams and a place that was once home and is now hate, misery, contempt.

This is a Classroom full of sheer lies, where I pretend to get on just fine but deep down I am drowning, my corpse covered in flies as I suffocate in this childhood paradise that has become a Hell unrealized.

This is not a Classroom.