A Spine of Stories

Day 27

I just counted the squares, twenty-seven of them, from the first. So twenty-seven days, of me sitting in front of a screen.

My mind feels just a little squishy. Like a soft, palpable sponge. It breathes gently, as my eyes stare on, dazed, at the chunks of language decorating the screen. There's a voice feeding my brain, my lone ear, saturating it with drones. And drones, and drones. Something about a balanced equation, something about essays. Not much is going into squishy. And that's a problem.

Perhaps I might be distracting myself, writing this paragraph in the midst of a Chemistry tutorial. But then again, what else would I be better off doing? A sip of my second coffee at nine in the morning, and he's moving on to question five. Another sip, the caffeine's one-way journey warms my spine and down.

Back to squishy. Squishy has long tuned out the drones. Not really, I still hear him. What does squishy want? Tell me, what do you want?

Squishy's probably asleep. She's rarely awake. She? He? Sponge. A useless sponge, Squishy is. But oh so pitiable, and soft. I shall forgive.

My stream of consciousness floats back to this entry, as I look back to the title. 'Day 27', of Zooms, a memory soon to be etched in history, a memory soon to be distant. Exams are also soon, I just got one back. My eyes briefly panned right, where Squishy is supposed to be. A wall of blue words; Cl2, oxidation. Many, many words.

This isn't really a story, isn't it? It's just my blatant distraction appropriated as an update. There is no ending to this. But I want to leave off on a formal note.

Oh how ironic, despite being cooped up, I seem to have lesser time for everything. Studying, eating, breathing. Everything feels like a ticking bomb, for some odd reason. Cooped up like a chicken, yet I'll bet everything to tell you, I wouldn't be as tasty.

Twenty minutes exactly, before Chemistry class is over. Then, a break. Then, Literature and Economics, a double whammy. But it's alright. It's been twenty-seven days. Speaking of days, about two hundred more, to the final showdown. My final showdown. My little flight up to the clouds, with my hands desperately clasped together, praying that there'll be no crash.

Two hundred more days, before a short and blissful freedom. A short and blissful freedom, with a distant gong, slowly, slowly picking up pace. Until it explodes next spring. Two hundred more days, is what I'm running, no, sprinting towards.

But I'm not really a good sprinter.

Ten more minutes to my break.

Sip.