satisfied

pencil shavings pushed

by youthful breath

huffing and puffing

with the effort

of creation.

"new year's,"

he mumbles,

lips only half aware

of the words

"is the worst."

all the pressure

of reinventing yourself

to be something better

and then being forced

to put those abstracts

into words

by a sixth grade

english teacher

who grades

on political correctness

rather than

grammatical effectiveness.

she watches him

with bloodshot eyes,

kept up by her husband

long into the night

as he tried in vain

to prompt desire

from her hips.

her new year's resolution

was escape

but no one else

could know that.

except, maybe, for the

man down the road

who she'd been

seeing in the dark

for a month.

he would never tire

of watching the stars

but she longed

for him in the sunlight.

the tip of the pencil

has been

ground down into

nothing

left only with

dull wood

and graphite dust

smudged on

desperate fingers.

shadows grow darker

in the schoolyard,

the english teacher knows

that her secret means more

when she's behind her desk

than it does

when she's in her bed

(or someone else's).

the boy knows

that pressures grow larger

throbbing in the background

until his fingers shake

just trying to form

the letter "o"

in

opinion.

for his new year's resolution

is to speak,

maybe for the first time

in his life

about what he thinks,

and not

what someone else things.

and his pressure

threatens to overtake him

while the teacher's secret

threatens her just the same

and when she leans over

his desk

their darkness

collides.

"carter, you know better,"

she says,

the words only half

belonging to her

prompted on

by a misplaced sense of duty

and a splash

of fate.

"opinion

isn't spelled

with an a."

it's not

an a,

he wants to scream.

my pencil broke,

and this is what

was left behind

in its wake,

a memorial

to my rage.

but instead he looks up

eyes vacant

and says

"i bet even your

husband

can't satisfy you."

and she is

blown away

crumbled into dust

by a middle school brat

left speechless

by the force

of her own

realization.

she would never

be satisfied.

and the universe watched

its orchestrated chaos

with eyes

turned upward with glee

and moved on

to its next

disaster.