Prozac 12mg

Wearing Lululemon shorts with seams that dig,
Pearl choker with the iridescent chipped.

Prepubescent bodies,
Tween girls all sit.
Gossiping and giggling,
White teeth glitter.

Bleached hair and bleached smiles,
What you would give,
To radiate their airbrushed bliss.

You pull up a plastic chair to the table,
Force everyone to nudge over a bit.
Slightly disconnected,
A wrinkle in their circumference

Whispers caress freshly pierced ears.
A birthday party? Sunday?
Carrigan Farms?
Will you be there?

The game of telephone, dominos of exciting news,
Topples before it reaches you.

So there, in the math classroom, you sit.
The hum of fluorescent lights,
Replaces conversation.

A chorus of feminine voices,
But your mind plays a different chord.

You must be a loser, a has-been,
A relic under glass, mislabeled, rarely visited,
All its thing-power¹
depleted.

With a screech, the metal scrapes across tiled floors,
You scooch your chair a couple of inches out,
Then a little bit more.

The seat dragging,
Its polypropylene belongs more than you.

You are hopeless.
Maybe you should walk right out the door?

Footnotes

1. Reference to an idea from "The Force of Things" by Jane Bennett. Thing-power is the inherent agency an object has to make an effect on the world. ↩