Suzanne S. Rancourt Bad Girls Speak to Mrs. P., I’m not sorry that you couldn’t find anything I want to flop my head onto the pull out table tray my right cheek flush to the plastic, stuck with post conference exhaustion like when Mrs. P. made us put our heads down on hard wooden-topped desks ‘cause we’d been bad which was better than when that boy who liked me would falsify the “who got caught talking” chit sheet so he could be the one wielding the extra thick wooden ruler that struck my palm for every mark he made on the list beside my name, a series of agitation in number 2 pencil scrawl. I took it. No tears. He was riddled with head lice, his clothes rank with kerosene. I want to put my head down on my desk again because pushing boundaries of socialization is heavy like moving sod the plow guy rolls up onto my lawn only to have it emerge with spring snow melt, the gouges carved into the Earth like those penned gashes deprecating names on the tops of ink dyed desks.
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