We sat in the back of science class bored out of our minds; we'd hit each other with pencils across our forearms until we were striped red and white and
we looked like dancing shrimps. We found comedy in hurting each other, playing both sadist and *******, feeling the power of inflicting damage and the humility of pain.
Years later not much had changedβ the pencils now needles, blood striped our arms. The classroom, like my homeβnow a car, we joked about burning a library in Alexandria. The humor remained
but it had changed; no longer about what lied ahead we joked about what was; architects of a fallen temple that never stood yet continued to be raided.
Once the jokes became stale I couldn't swallow them anymore spitting out a poppyseed after receiving the Heimlich maneuver
yet others choke their whole life on a hollow humor tumor benign until malignant the ruins of their adytum cover the hill to die on.