My Cardboard Balcony

Five Minutes by Belinda Roddie My stopwatch exploded; tiny fragments, shrapnel, clogged my vision, and now I can't see anything else but smears of color instead of faces, and places, and things, and scenes. It was only five minutes ago that I felt normal, but now the sadness drips off the tongue like dew off a clichéd flower petal, and no amount of sun will bring light to me. Not now. Not ever in the persistent present.

"What did you derive this conclusion from?" asked the professor as she sat down with the student for their one on one meeting regarding final papers. "Bats." The professor raised an eyebrow. "Sorry?" "Bats," the student repeated. "See, I'm a big night wanderer. I wander at night. Fairly straightforward, if you ask me." "Yes, I suppose so, but - " "And see, there are a lot of bats flying around my neighborhood lately," the student interrupted. "And somehow, it just...fit with the whole existential crisis of Hemingway's minimalist work, you know?"