tuesday, 406

i am not alone, today
i look around and it is
copied and pasted, every few seats,
those of us who made it here.

ragamuffin, mis-matched,
hair is ashen spectrums,
mid-morning coffee breath
from mid-temperature coffee.

i am tired, sunken eyes
half-mast, fixed on one tile
of the old linoleum floor,
contemplating the cloud at my back.

it is so gray in 406, a fog
like the hue in between bed-sheets.
i wish i wasn't wearing mascara, or
blush, powder, paints.

i wish that guy wasn't wearing a suit
because he has bed-head and pink eyes,
one finger to his moustache lip
in between intermittent yawning.

i wish that girl wasn't wearing a bedazzled hat
or those oversized silver-plated earrings,
hiding her watercolor face, smears,
i wish she would just show it.

i wish we were all dressed
together in tan and cream cotton blends
draping over form, with our
hair and skin in pink and soot tones.

i don't know, i just think it'd be beautiful,
like a choir, or angels, or a family.
i just realized, i'm probably being used as an example
in a college classroom, somewhere

that hard-headed girl who "saved" my friend
at the kitchen table one afternoon,
and how to date i'm helping people think,
"stupid Christians, ragamuffin and mis-matched"

i wonder if anyone else is listening
to the professor, or smelling his
coffee breath. i wonder what they're thinking,
if it's anything like what i'm thinking.