“How pitifully he stands.”
How pitifully he stands. How repugnantly he sweats.
How he sweats. How great a knot he’s got blocking his throat!

If it were up to him, he’d not be here.
By the advice of his friend, and only that, he stands, barely.

How he’d love to be alone, at home, or at least on the other side of this room.
How unbearable is the Hell of this corner! But, he is all alone!

Alone, as if he were in the desert.
Sweating, shaking, doing a pathetic job of holding back his tears, as if he were in the desert.

And, he stares, too. Rudely, but more like a deer bathed in its fatal light, who thinks nothing of rudeness.
Or, even more precisely, a deer just having spotted a predator unaware; calculating the most noiseless escape, but, still uncouthly.

So he stands: eyes staring,
Neck, legs frozen,
Feet slippery in their shoes, soles welded to the desert floor.

Like a deer thrown into the desert,
Staring into the headlights of a great cat, which is the sun.

He looks back, from the corner he dreads
To the one he knows he cannot return,
He is told what is expected:
“go on.”

How could she dare to tell him to go on!
But she’s right, so he does.

He inches forward,
How dreadfully, awkwardly he walks!
He can’t do anything right.

Now, a lump in his chest surges.
He is panicking.

He is screaming. No, sitting.
There is emptiness in his head now,
He does not feel anything as he lowers himself,
As he goes from standing to screaming. No, sitting.

He is greeted, twice: “Hi.” “Oh, hi, I didn’t see you there.”
“Hi.”

Now he is standing before the sun
That is a cat
Which is equipped with headlights,
And it notices him.
But, she puts her headphones on.

So, he stays there, as a deer frozen in the desert, for about five interminable minutes until he’s beckoned back to the corner he knows he cannot stay in.
“What are you waiting for?” “She has her headphones in.” “So what? Speak to her.”

She was right, again.
He didn’t know why, but she always seemed to be right, when it came to these things.

So he walks back, the classroom’s tiles give way to frigid, twisting sands and half of him becomes a deer.
He is still wearing shoes, they are stuck to the sand, despite his walking and the sand’s shifting.

He does not scream this time,
He looks her in the eyes and says:

“Hi, can I talk to you for a minute?
Out there.”

He walks, and hears the strange monster that lives between his legs say something,
He pays no heed, because it’s stupid and doesn’t know anything.

He opens the door, and holds it for her.
It is the heaviest door he’s found in his life.

Outside, he stops, and waits for the door to close with a thud.
Everything is real, and he begins to speak.
But, alas, he cannot.

He gesticulates wildly,
His hands jerk about in despair.

He tries to summon up what he’d planned to recite,
The consonants are sewn to his throat.

He cannot say, “I think I am in love with you.”
All the while, the tumor in his chest pulsates.
It is about to burst.

Then, finally, she speaks.

“Is this about that facebook message from a while ago?”
He ceases his death throes,
He considers a minute:
“Yes.”

“Well, the thing is, I had a boyfriend then.”
Again, a pause, but: “Okay.”

She returns wordlessly,
He stays.

He stares at the wall, and feel sobs coiling up in his chest
But instead of crying, asks the wall why there is a desert.

He goes back to the corner, where he is now welcome.
“The thing is, she had a boyfriend.”
His friend just similes, and embraces him.
However, he is all alone.
The wall never gave him an answer.
And when he got home that day ten hours later, he cried for fifteen minutes, because he still didn’t know.