Genessis Soto, “The Final Battle”
In the depths of a soulless city
With snow falling like dried leaves,
A school filled with children biting their nails
And throwing paper airplanes
Commences.
“Look at me”,
The teacher demands
“Watch the board”,
“Stop messing around”.
The children watch her hands
And admire the way she moves the marker
Across the white void clad in scuff marks.
She never was able to rub off the colorful dashes
Outlining the latest math equation or that list of names
We feared finding our own traced upon.
A few of the bravest students
Would call out answers
And whine when they were told they’re wrong.
Other kids would stay silent and impatiently
Wait for the final bell to announce their freedom.
This is what most kids did
And I was one among the mass wishing
Friday would come sooner
And the minute hand would tick
Just a bit faster.
We all thought we could keep up
With the ticking
But we were never brave enough to compete.
Not until it was too late and
We were the ones hanging on as it flew
Faster than we could ever run.
By the time my feet hit the tiles,
The scuff marks were gone and the clock
Was stuck where it left us.
We pushed the hand back
But the bright colors
Plastered on the wall that used to blind us
Were stripped from each board,
And the teacher we’d groan over was missing
From her usual place in the front of the classroom.
No more laughing
Or pleads for attention,
No more gluesticks stuck
Beneath desks
And tissues lying just before the bin.
I watch the minute hand lie still
And can’t help but wonder
Where my confidence went,
The vibrant soul I grasped so tightly
As I denied the feeling of my skin ripping with it.
I try to run,
But my feet are roots digging into the stone.
I look back at the cyclone
We’d ridden and finally stopped reaching
For the picture frames that sat behind each number.
That clock left us behind,
The clock we always thought moved too slow,
The one we begged to run faster.
We never learned how to live without our old teacher
There to tell us how,
Not until we stopped pushing the clock and finally left
That classroom she’d wipe clean of our lives.
