the mornings are dark and you get into your car asleep. mist on the windshield and mist in your eyes. the night is not over and you are not yet grown. the grass is frozen in your headlights and you park your car asleep.

- clocks bigger than your face loom on the walls. they are all two minutes fast and they are faces too, somehow. (except the one down in the back gym. he is an eye and he strikes six every hour.)

- the thunder of footsteps. the thunder of bodies and voices and wind through open doors. you can feel them in your bones but when you open your eyes you are alone and the halls are dark. water rushes from the classrooms and you swim.

- your teacher says that god has brown eyes. when the lecture ends she bares her teeth. (you could swear they're pointed but you've never seen her up close.) her eyes are grey, like yours, she says. so you don't worry.

- in the art room your teacher draws circles on the whiteboard. one inside the other - ringlets, a bullseye. a girl in the back of the class has wild eyes and green hair. she smiles like she knows something and you drop your gaze.

- pencils break in your fists. the halls are a river and you don't know where it's going. your body is a raft so you close your eyes and you don't know where you are.

- you touch hands with the girl from art class. she smiles like she knows something and you shudder. she feels warm inside, like a song, like a comet. you take her hand and hope.

- you sit in the back of the class and the windows shudder but they hold. your teacher says that god walks on all fours and you grimace. books close around you as she lowers herself to the ground.

- your car is asleep and you are dead on your feet. your teacher is gone the next day and the substitute tells you beauty is in the eye of the beholder. you nod your head and you don't know where you are.