Aquarium Friday and Other Stories

twenty kids in a philosophy class

this is just something i wrote after a had a conversation which made me doubt everything that has ever existed and will exist. only consolation was that the conversation was held with a cute longboarding boy on a nice green lawn on a sunny day. also this is rudimentary and stupid but i feel like i need to post something up for you guys

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twenty kids in a philosophy class

desk edges clutched with pale hands

chattering pencils

hipster glasses

so many questions their heads hurt

is determinism real

are we fated or are we free

(what the fuck, sophocles)

is destiny

real

linear time, the eternal moment

it’s 12:50

back to the real world

walk out into the sun, shrug off your jacket

see him skating your way, wave hello,

find a patch on the grass.

talk.

under the trees with crisscrossing leaves that shield you

from a sun so far away yet so close

talk

because that is all you can do

talk

because we’re not one of them

we are not new

we are not brave

we are the old, the changing, the running, the scared

and we know it

and you think about twenty kids in a philosophy class

who talk

and yet it makes no difference

the sun does not make any more sense

the leaves rustle in the same way

time is linear, marching straight on from where we came,

marching straight on to where we’re going,

and his face is strange when he says,

pulling on a blade of grass,

‘well, you know what they say

let go, or be dragged.’

because you’re confused

because you always thought that if you tinted things a certain way

life would be easier

because you always thought that if you found that place to burrow away in

life would be simpler

because you believed you wouldn’t make the same mistakes

but in that belief

you did

because the tint has to change

let go, or be dragged

(ancient chinese proverb)

and you want to lie down in the grass, cover yourself,

munch on the leaves, build a cocoon,

never come out,

but then you wouldn’t see the reflection in his eyes that says he would do the same,

but instead we’re all out here,

climbing trees and telling bad jokes from south park,

trying to paint, aiming our bows at something new,

we’re all just

here

and nowhere else,

we’ve come here from far away,

from here we will go somewhere far away,

but for now, we are

not new

not brave,

just hoping to someday have somebody apart from ourselves

we can save.

we miss the target more often than we hit it,

but, wherever they land,

our arrows will always point to the center of the universe