the perils of love and graduate work

it is the awkward gait of a tall girl who is not graceful enough to play sports, the frat boys who sit in the corner near the door and shoot looks at each other while everyone else reads their Keats

every soul in this room is concerned with their own monologue and even i can’t hear their palpitating hearts despite the infinite acoustics of the room which turn every subtle movement into the miserable moan of old auditorium seats

there are spilt blueberries on the floor in the back, abandoned skin shriveled like a gentle reminder my plump cheeks, incandescent with desire will hollow out in my old age

they (the blueberries) and i listen to the shuffling of reluctant young english majors into stiff lecture halls where their vocal cords have gone to die and be haunted by the latent dripping of a slow death from a paper purgatory, inkwell run dry

the auditorium will not remember us after we have fulfilled the expectation of our time here and as i speak these existential fears , his mirrored floodgate eyes refuse to challenge it or condemn my urge to prove myself memorable

his eyes are a rabbit hole, ponderously deep, and this fated temptation that has found its way, mothlike, under his linen shirt exists only in my lack of desire to euthanize that dream so i scrawl love notes in pen onto my hand and,

when my left hand runs out of room i spill invasive memories into my right that i will later read aloud from, voice muffled as a boy with bovine eyes nods while the smoke from his hand-rolled cigarette makes love to the ceiling