Her summer dress is red as a ripe September apple,

a pink sunset dances upon her cheeks.

I steal glances as she scrawls

 

rapidly, frantically, a diligent worker bee,

attempting to preserve, like buzzing flies in amber,

the words spewing out of the teacher's mouth.

 

I can almost see gears spinning in her head.

Perhaps they are what draw the blood to her cheeks

like moths to a flame.

 

Or maybe it is simply that she is alive.

Meanwhile, the teacher's words hang

lazily in the distance.

 

The lecture seems to belong to another world

of banality and redundancy.

I can finish my teacher's sentences for him.

 

So I am content to float away,

her dress transfigured into a magic carpet

upon which I soar through the sky painted upon her cheeks

 

with bold strokes of fiery pastels,

until an electronic buzz signals the class' end

and forces me back to earth.