Shaking hands 

Putting your fingers on the camera.

Grabbing pencils on the plastic wood

Imagining that it's a particleboard.

I’m at my window but I want to be at a desk,

Looking at a board that squeaks

And erases

And accumulates time or lessons 

Not at a screen that gleans the mean of a keen teen in a world of disease.

Body odor in the hallways

And tape on the floor

Signs on the door

And pipes on the walls—

The earliest return is at the end of the fall

And for what?

A fear that the inevitable will creep to us sooner than what we want to control?

It’s time that the oak and the stone picnic tables are the backdrop.

4 years of my life that I’ll never get back and I won’t settle for this.