what i wrote during a free writing session with my students (later class)

this space—tenuous. the lack of available capacity as palpable as the noxious gloam of the buzzing fluorescent lights overhead. how we sit and stare at one another feels like waiting for the bottom to fall out of an elevator. until we all come tumbling down from the pressure. crushed under the weight of our own lack of interest or investment or time. sometimes being here makes it difficult to breathe. makes me wonder if i’ve lost the ability to produce sensible speech. these silences cause me to feel dumb—like i’ve forgotten my own name or the names of anything or the need for names at all. sometimes the way your thousand eyes reflect my own image back to me without change renders me lost in a world where i thought i knew my way—leaves me longing for a way to reinvent motivation.