User Profile

On most mornings I open my eyes to the irksome combination of household movement and the seemingly endless tweeting of the sixteenth and seventeenth African lovebirds ever to survive in our house. Motionless, I lay in the same fetal position I woke up in and attempt to have ten more minutes of sleep. Next thing I know my alarm goes off and I’ve apparently already lost around twenty minutes of my life twisting in place. I stumble to the bathroom and stand staring at the constant stream of water flowing out of the showerhead for a good minute before allowing myself to submit to the very notion of being awake. Once the water molecules trickle down my scalp to my toes, time stops moving in slow motion and ticks away like a dog in heat. I scamper around for warm clothes, breeze through the stacks of papers on my desk or on the foot of my bed, while sipping the hot coffee (which really tastes like coffee-flavored water) brought up for me. Fuck. Half an hour before class. The drive to school almost becomes a scene spliced from Amazing Race but I manage to nonchalantly prance to class with the paper I had crammed in one hand and a real cup of coffee from the vending machine in the other. Four and a half hours of class leaves my hair poofy making me crave for another stick costing me seven days of my life. Nonetheless, I sit in the same place and smoke my smokes while reading whatever it is I’ve carelessly dumped in my bag the night before. Every now and then I glance at the people around and me and conjure up a scenario and picture their lives as clips on film. Different everyday people cross my way like a bunch of tangent lines on a wide, open field. So many lives, so many stories, so many depths and contexts to even realize. I write everything down on fragmented pieces of papers in disarrayed thought striving to conserve the tiniest of feelings. I take the last puff of the shortened cigarette. I fling it as far out into the grass and let the light spread itself to the last millimeter before it finally reaches the end where it has no other choice but to surrender to darkness.