A sickly student

As he leaned against that white washed wall
and stared into the discolored tile on the floor
it began to move, wave, and distort itself in a way
he had only perceived under the influence of intense psychedelics.

The vomit shaded splotches that speckled each 8"x8" tile
made his empty stomach the victim of a jail break,
but bile was the only prisoner willing to be freed
and its radiant brown-green complexion contrasted
with the diluted off-white background upon which it settled.

The people around him were watching his sickness unfold,
but he didn't see any of them.
He just saw the sharp florescent light of a television
reflecting off her wet lips as he caressed and kissed her passionately.
He merely watched her petite jaw, ebb and flow
with the tide of their communal saliva,
and felt her heart beat within the delicate muscles of her neck
and in the crevices of her dainty hands.

His perspective went dim and his unbalanced weight carried his face towards a puddle on the floor.
As his cheek made contact with the fleshy bodily fluid, his eyes remained closed and locked in to his fantasy, or delusion.
He dove into her, or fell. Straight through her collarbones and chest, face first.
Her pool of skin felt more like a sea of silk on his rough face
and as his ankles finally descended the surface into the depths of her soul,
people began to murmur while he laid nestled in his own.

He found things at the bottom of this pool he didn't want to find.
A drain, where all things beautiful were sucked down, out and cast aside.
A thick coarse wall, that kept her liquid emotion from spilling onto someone who gives a damn.
And emulsified sludge, comprised of dead leaves and dirt that had been compounded and compressed over years without spring cleaning.
His fanciful thoughts faded and frantically he reached for the surface. His lungs, he noticed, had been on empty for some time, and his desperateness burdened his legs to propel him upwards.
He kicked impetuously at the ground but only sank further into the drain that would carry him away from the glorious shining surface.
He wanted so badly to feel the sun on his face. Let it dry his wet body on the beach.
He longed to feel sand underneath his back and salt water crusted in his hair (something he had never once considered before)

but when he awoke all that crusted his hair, was vomit
and he didn't lay on his back he laid on his stomach, fully clothed with his jacket on and backpack weighing him down on the floor. where he sat up and found himself alone in a long hallway,
the walls whiter than ever and the tiled floor as bland as usual.
his cheek still wet and dirty but drying slowly as the the acid evaporated from the bile on his face.
he swung his head around bemused: he was sure there were people here when he passed out.
they weren't here now, they had all gone to class and left him with his face lying in filth.

He was reminded of his dream, and of her. How could someone so beautiful, someone he loved so much
have a heart filled with the things he had imagined.
That's when he realized, it wasn't she whom he was diving into, it was them
those who had left him vulnerable and alone in that strange hallway.
Not even a teacher, a principal, an advisor had the care to come pick his sickly self off the floor.
These were the ones with hearts of sludge and drains in their soles.
The ones who wouldn't let their pity and compassion spill out to him.

He didn't feel like returning to class, rather to just go home and clean himself up.
He never returned to school, he had seen enough of that place, no more would he take lessons from them.
He had learned everything he needed to know without stepping foot inside that classroom.