from A series of Lecture Notes from Harvard

They ran. This was just another stupid American notion of romance, as the Italian had noted with her nose scrunched up. The sky ripped itself to shreds, sending the tears they had secretly let fall on the ground pouring back down upon them. Delirious off of boredom, they fell splashing. The dirty water stained their buttocks and crotches, squirting up their thighs. For forty five minutes they would forget the chocolate slave trade of West Africa, the happy buddhas adorning their armoires, and the unhappiness that was so fashionable to wear on the body at the time. The water filtered by tree branches cooled their blushing faces. Peels of joy made their way from the stomach to the back of the teeth. Hugging each one of their wet bodies, they never realized that they barely knew each other, yet they rocked each other to sleep with lullabies. They screamed after quiet hours, vomiting out their intestines, trying to read the future in them. One wanted a family, with a wife to bend over and pat the children on their heads. One wanted to save another's world, so she could escape from her own. One wanted money to spend on decorating the flesh of her soul. They sang these hymns outloud in the night's infested air, too afraid to breathe in during the day. They ran. They tried to forget that they were living the last moments of childhood. They let the sky cry for them. There, in the Faculty Club circle, they were stoned with raindrops as they analyzed the empty black canvas above. They were trapped in a ring of perfect white benches. Each drop penetrated their skin's pores, flushing out fear in toilet seats. There, in the modern Stonehenge, they happily wanted to die.
 

Anthea Karmalnath New York, NY, USA

 

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