Final Exam Week

I put on my air of authority as a vegetarian putting on fur coat: not quite right and not quite wrong, uncomfortable, disturbing, but not entirely antithetical to my inner Machiavelli. Rejecting the hopeful pleas leaves me bleeding and yet oddly pleased at the karmic retribution doled out to the slacker, the narcissist, the arrogant, and the ignorant.

I lay down the law with an iron fist tempered by a guilty conscience and a feeling of my own failure, turning the gavel into a joke, cartoon sized, red and yellow with pretty pink sparkly butterfly stickers. The sad eyes and (il)logical reasons make me sad.

I see the failure of others as my own failure whether the blame can rest on my shoulders or not. Their long absences or inability (non-desire) to do the work required take a back seat to my own feelings of inadequacy…as if I should have/could have gripped their hand harder and pulled them through the murky, rolling-high waters of knowledge.

I hold the keys to the kingdom and while my right hand tries to give a set to everyone, my left tries to withhold them. I am contradiction; smiling, crying, suffering, rejoicing, over others’ losses.