Building a Better Bomb

“Wake up, dear. It’s time to go to school.” “Aw, I don’t wanna.” “But you have to, dear. You’re the teacher.”

The words are dead. The sentences came out stillborn, no doubt about that. The only lively passages are the plagiarized ones. The teacher looks at the clock. It’s only been ten minutes. He looks at the stack of essays. A disheveled tower of incompetence waiting to ruin his weekend, hundreds of pages scrawled with graffiti, tattooed with text. He looks at the students. Their bored boring faces remind him of how long he had to attend college just to babysit the future inmates of San Quentin. Babysitting body bags. Babysitting dust. He looks at the clock. It’s only been two minutes since the last time he looked. He looks at the students. Their spaded hands thrust upward like fascist salutes, anxious to ask him a question he has no interest in answering. He looks at the clock. Its hands are refusing to move. He looks at the students. Their blooming pimples and budding sources of shame awkwardly remind him of all the rites of passage he missed out on while struggling to maintain a 3.3 GPA in high school. He looks at the clock. It’s frowning 8:20 at him. He looks at the students, wondering if they can tell he has a hangover.