originally written in January '04

He walked into the room, half expecting the desks to be out of order and strewn across the room in a random mixture of assorted places and positions. The floor was a cold grey tile pattern, the ceiling a cold grey ceiling pattern, and the walls were the walls; they limited the room while their posters offered a false sense of freedom and excitement. The desks, although not strewn across the room, were still mostly out of place, their positions left over from the drudgery of many students coming and going throughout the day. Most of the seats were worn mostly through while their legs were dented and scratched. There was not a single place to sit that had not been sat in before, nor a place that would not be sat in again. A dull light shown through the windown on the far wall, illuminating the particles of dust suspended timelessly in the air. The air smelled old and stuffy, as if the room had been locked away for centuries in a far off cave buried beneath a mountain. His entrance to the room caused a slight breeze to disturb a pile of papers on one of the desks. The top sheet lazily floated back and forth on its way to its resting place on the floor,beneath the deask. A second peice fluttered next to it, the two sheets alone while floating next to each other.

he sat down at his desk at the front of the classroom tenderly, trying not to disturb the solitude of the room. A low long creak sighed its way into the air as he sat, a moan of protest against his intrusion into the confines of the room. The clock ticked away its seconds agrily, scolding him with every tock, as the chair ceased its creaking. Each second seemed longer than the last, an infinite amount of time passed between each tick, between each tock. Lifetimes had passed between the moment he sat down and the moment that he looked up to survey the old room. There was the desk that had been vandalized by one of his students, but that had been years before. That student, he couldn't remember his name, had gotten married the year before and was expecting his first child in a few months. He, however, was still here, expecting his students to come to class. And they would come, then they would go. There would always be new students to replace them, and other students to replace those, and even more students to replace them. There would be another teacher to replace him. He would be forgotten just as he had forgotten. He was here now, though, his lesson still needed to be taught. It was nothing too important, just another thing to learn. It would also be forgotten. Another second ticked off the clock. The students would be coming in soon.