Falling

Fall semester starts tomorrow. It’ll be exciting - for a few days - but it won’t be long before we’ll miss the tanned bodies of summer, the cool, clear lake-water or lounging carefree, on bright, sand-like gravel beaches. Tomorrow, things will be different. Our days will start earlier, they'll be a value - a new currency - to morning hours that went wasted on unproductive summer vacations. The change will be sudden, herk, there may be an audible pop of some sort, somewhere, in tonight’s darkest hours. We’ll be going to the gym so early that we’ll be done and leaving before the first, lazy pigments of sunlight weave morning. I imagine my room looks like backstage at a new Broadway musical, the very first rehearsal - when nothing’s set in stone and everything’s a mess. My clothes are everywhere. Why did I decide to reorganize tonight? Brilliant. Peter wants to come over but.. “No,” I say, sighing, overwhelmed. “Look,” I say, as I slowly pan the Facetime camera around the war zone that my room has become. “Oh, my GOD,” he says, jerking back in horror, like a Californian seeing a fur-coat, “Was anyone HURT?!” “Ha, Ha, I say, sarcastically, suddenly too tired, “Breakfast at 6:30?” I ask. “Sure,” he says, taking a tucked pencil from behind his right ear. “Guh-night,” he says. “See-YA!” I say, pressing the red button and letting gravity guide my phone to a gentle rest atop the clothes-pile that’s concealing my bed. . slang: herk = heck