It took only minutes and the snatch of two Sugar Babies from
his box
They were off and running
“Those are mine.”
“You have a whole box. I can take two.”
Sternness from both
Each holding their ground with furrowed brows
Spiral notebooks with mangled pages of boys,
Pencils missing erasers and teeth-mark tattoos
One shoves the computer into the other’s space
The other shoves it right back with a huff
The power cord clanks to the floor
I watch and can taste the frustration in the kitchen
Soup boils on the stove filling the tense room with chicken
wafts and splatters
Procrastinators sit on chairs as the sunlight bothers one
“Could you pull the blinds shut?”
No please of course
“Why should I?”
“Just close them.”
“No.”
I stand and close them and hold my tongue but not for long
It happens too often for me not to know
This will escalate and they will get loud
I will have to be louder than them to gather the peace that
is scattered on the kitchen rug
I know they are upset with themselves
They wear their procrastination around their necks
Heavy with paragraphs, reading and algebra saved from the
week
It will pass, but not as quickly as I would like
They will finish later than sooner this day
Soup is slurped in silence until one opens the laptop
cockeyed on the table
“Did you see that YouTube video of the guy who is
skateboarding and…”
The video loads between spoonfuls of soup
They laugh together
The other then searches for the other video of the kitten
that falls asleep on the aquarium.
They laugh again.
No comments:
Post a Comment