this is a college campus and I should be studying

but I'm watching. 

people who aren't trying to be beautiful.

we cut our hair
Smile
hug our legs adjust our glasses
cough and breathe
logic.
He is tapping his foot anxiously at the table, calculator in both hands.

She looked up and laughs, 
cross-uncross jeaned-legs,
Stretch shrug yawn 

eyes brighten on the phone,
bite nails or listen, still, smiling.

She is still twisting hazel hair around her finger.

I am still twitching my big toe to a beat only I hear.

we analyze synthesize wipe our eyes laugh and

this is not a zoo. I am not a fly and I am sitting in a chair, not on a wall

but observation is a strange feeling. It feels gentle and curious, the way clouds feel as they drift through the blue. It feels like peace. Like pieces of art sprinkled onto so many independent, moving beings and I, i get to watch them

we are all of the extended metaphors and we snatch them from the universal word bank of oxygen,
(it surrounds us and cushions our bodies against empty space)
inhaling
exhaling
existence.

we don't know what it means but
what is meaning but deep breaths of creativity,
taken human shape and crawling until they walk on two legs
all trying to grow and be

and succeeding wildly in the most subtle of
unexpected
ways?

[thursday in the library]