She stared blankly at the computer screen
With its flickering screen of judgement.
What are you looking at?
Silence. A screensaver.
Enough of that sass.
It was finally complete.
Her hair wearing its disheveled frizz like a badge of honor
From all-night typing
And two pots of coffee
Where her comb-fingers turned the smoothness of her hair
Into a stress-reliever
As she muttered madly to herself
(But quietly, so as not to wake the roommates
Who slumbered in their honey chambers
Away from the heart of her hive of activity).
She had buzzed all night
On a caffeine-high
That made her hands tremble
Her muscles ache
And her eyes hate her.
And now
With too much to do
And a limited time to do it in
She had to keep buzzing.
Coffee *** number three was carefully stored
In a travel mug
That she clutched to her clavicle
Just to keep the warmth that much closer to her hyped-up heart.
She made her stops at offices and libraries
Retrieving promised letters
And printing the labors of her night intensive
Before she could finally deposit it
Behind the glass windows
Of the scholarship office.
This is too much work for less-than-ideal odds.
But she had no time to dwell
On the gamble she had made
And paid in hours of wakefulness
And the inked-up peelings from tree corpses.
She rushed from class to class
Where she tried to speak in coherent sentences,
To dance with sharp choreography,
And to contribute to society
But her body hated her
Because she had betrayed it
And deprived it of the only thing that it truly loved in this world:
Sleep.
It would have its vengeance.
It would have its vengeance when she was old, creaky, and could no longer move.
But for now, her body made do with small rebellions
To demonstrate its displeasure.
Sentences were not sentences
And every turn, leap, and twist
Made her think longingly of sleep.
And her body laughed.
But at long last,
The sun set
The girl slept
And then the sun rose.
And this continued to happen
Many times.
It rose and it set
It rose and it set
It rose and it set
Until she had forgotten
And her body had forgiven
The sleepless night.
