Teacher's Lunch (Love Among the Quahogs)

(Wrote this during a summer writing program using three very unrelated prompts. I meant to post some summery poems last month, but now, though it still technically is summer, since everyone is going back to school (I start college tomorrow! Just throwing that out there), I thought this would be more appropriate.)

The professor’s stomach

Twisted inside him

And not because of the shrimp.

She was sitting right across from him

Dark hair falling out of its bun

Her eyes crinkling up as she laughed—

Why was she so beautiful?

He hadn’t really planned on coming

To the teacher’s lunch;

He disliked crowds

And being ignored

And restaurants in general.

But then she had asked him at the end of the day

English books in her arms

Her glasses perched on top of her head

If he was coming that night;

Fumbling, he had no choice

But to say yes.

Now he tried to think of something to say

Cracking open a lumpy gray quahog

Feeling uncomfortable and boring

In his musty brown suit

While she talked to the biology teacher

About the book she was teaching

In her class, saying

“He may seem foolish, but, you know,

Dreams aren’t something you can control.”

The professor wanted to add something clever

Or witty

Or intelligent

Or thoughtful

But he hadn’t read the book

So he kept reaching for the quahogs

To keep his hands busy

Prying open the rocky shells

Imagining that within there would be

A luminous pearl, round and bright as the moon

He could polish with his handkerchief

And grandly give to her—

She would smile at him then.

He lost himself in this fantasy

Letting the conversations around him blur

Almost relaxing in the noisy, crowded room

Until he opened his last quahog

Slowly

And saw that there was nothing inside

But a slimy, grayish lump.

Of course that’s all there was.

Why did he think it would be any different?

He looked up

And there she was

Laughing at something the biology teacher had said

Her eyes crinkled up

Not at him.

The professor pushed away

His treasureless plate of quahogs,

Stomach squeezing again

With a different sort of ache.

Dreams aren’t something you can control.

God, he hated seafood.