The Love of Wheels

Coffee cup empty a straw trapped in its inner chocolate-wet corner. I have a paper due in time too soon, my fingers twitching from the raging caffeine. A smudge of dirt, on blue carpet, spreads in small piles, an empty pack of Splenda No Calorie Sweetener dangerously close. I hear a slam poet from my home town on the microphone but I don't listen. I sit behind my friend's black, filthied wheelchair. A burning sensation from under my chestnut turtleneck sweater stretches my ribs. Stapled papers carefully placed in his bag, a task I could have done; I, who had kept in it his red folder of poetry he had never remembered to share with me. He turns his wide, tired eyes like an infant, loudly smacking his lips [I'll kiss them once he's shaven and made sex into a camoflauged, vanishing whisper], the sight that once made me a mother when I washed his hair in the shower of inconsistent heat. I secretly ran my fingers through his brunette waves. His gray yet young wheels are covered in dirt, touching my knees that were stained by grass.