The Introvert

Ryan Hill

Chemistry Major—2nd Year

He works so quietly, you say. Don’t you see my leg crossed under the desk, switching back and forth, foot-tapping, unable to stop until someone tells me I’m making the table quake? Don’t you hear the blur, the sparking circuits, the crate of lost words,  the lost-and-found for useless facts scattered across the roadside by the truck  that hit them dead-on whose trajectory I calculate— Wait, what’s four times seven?

Take a guess what I do with my time when there’s no deadline to meet— Do it, guess. I hear you say nothing - I’m not in any clubs, after all.  I just gaze aimlessly at the wall.

Thanks for the 

Slap

in the face.

I’m even busier when I’m having fun. There are stories to write and levels to beat  and games to plan for friends whom I love but never get to see  unless I do all the groundwork to get them together, all while jamming out  to my discordant cacophonies because idle music makes for idle thoughts  and I’ll never get anywhere or anything done with idle— I lost my train of thought again.

You say quiet, I hear screaming. A rocket, the g-force cracking my skull into pieces  and forcing dark circles to pool under my eyes from the broken blood vessels. You only ask if I’m getting enough sleep. Who has time for sleep when there’s work to be done and I’m already ten  no twenty steps behind because I waste my time and I don’t try and that’s my fault  and I’ll never amount to anything because I’m so

Damn

Lazy

So no, I don’t use my mattress to sleep.  I use it to contemplate the texture of the ceiling While my mind decelerates Except it doesn’t, because I have a lead foot. So instead I just smother myself with a pillow,  desperately hoping the 

asphyxia 

will make my brain Shut—