mood: mutedmusic: 'christine' by siouxsie and the banshees

breakfast at the cafeteria was always gloomy. half-asleep at half-past seven, students drifted across the tile, their feet dragging, their arms out to hold their trays. i pictured the trays gone and amused myself fleetingly with the perfect likeness of zombies.

i grabbed two cups and filled them both with coffee. obviously black. this early in the morning i'm too lazy to get up and refill my cup a second time. the grease and caffeine slosh back and forth on my tray, but i still try to step lively. i'm probably just as cranky as the next guy, if not more, but i do my best not to sink to breakfast zombie status.

i sit next to melissa and bury my fork into whatever pile of shiny food i chose today. as an undergrad, i reserve the right to eat shitty food. as much as i try to immerse myself in a stomach-full of grease, there's no denying that at this hour, there just isn't much to talk about. i feel the tension, she doesn't.

'i wonder when we're doing vowels in linguistics,' i say. 'the only thing we've been doing this week is consonants and it's driving me crazy.'

silence. it's understandable.

i put two and two together: that was lame, and it's seven-fucking-thirty in the freaking morning. i put my head back down towards my plate, half imagining it to be more like me prostrating myself apologetically than as a precursor to shoveling more slop in my face.

dark circles, cavernous yawns, dragging soles. i submit to the early morning life of a breakfast zombie.

---Goei---