There's that cough behind me,
she's been sick the past 2 weeks,
looked like a mess in a hailstorm after God rejected her

then took her 'round back as a one night stand
she's coughing up stained glass on her paper,
and I can feel the shards of
unanswered questions
scraping at the back of my heart like her last hope
but I can't turn around--
can't be the heroic saint I wish I was.

Surreptitiously I glance up:
he's on page 2.
He's always on page 2, always ahead of me, tauntingly more perfect

secure in his own identity scrawled in the upper corner of his test
and I'm still looking at the blank space next to the command for---

my name

disappointment only distracts me for a moment
as the renewed sounds of sneezing and coughing splutter from behind me

I can hear the rosary squeezing her lungs shut,
her prayers raising the hairs on the back of my neck
like a church choir:

Dear God, Dear God.
And she can't stop saying it.

I wonder if she really believes in anything more than
this disaster
with nameless students rising together
handing in their finished tests
throwing themselves far ahead of humanity as possible
unaware of the girl sitting behind me
who has been sick the past two weeks
her bone
shaking
cough
ripping

into her last hopes for anything close to

Salvation.

I decide this is the moment
to break us both out of our perfectly constructed isolation
aware of my teachers gaze hooked onto the conception
of students constantly cheating her control,
I turned in my chair,
glancing at her forced redemption--

bless you.