Poor Martha, She has no clue...

....that I was writing a scathing review of her for half of the last class.



Martha, O and what a Martha this one is. She just oozes Martha.
Sitting there with her little girl wire frames, squinting though she's in the front row.
Poorly powdered nose titled down bookwards
O mousy hair, mousy voice, mousy Martha.
It looks like she's decided to spice things up, the flirt that she is. Perhaps she had grand visions of imitating a starlet from eras gone by for she has tied a foolish scarf around her pale neck, drooping, it complements her perfectly.
It is washed out, like her.
Her shorts are khaki, of course. O and Dear me, what shoes peep toe bronze flat-notes. Dressed for success this one.
Crossing her arms, nose titled towards the professorial horizon...when she furrows her brow and tilts to type a nascent double chin forms.
Dios mios dolly, what is your heritage?
I can imagine you as easily with your gawky limbs in a cow pasture dreaming wild horses, or on the volleyball court with your massive paws smacking a ball to and fro. Maybe in some Albertan highway town, scanning items under fluorescent lights your milky skin a bitter blue. Price check!
Oh I saw that Martha, saw that hawk like scowl as you train your beady eyes (smothered beneath those adolescent frames) at another girl with the audacity to ask a question. You nod your head obediently as the Professor drones, laugh on cue, throw your gaze. Whoa girl, settle.
But here we are. You and I. You are probably a sweet and naive girl who loves her family, team sports, and doing her best. I can already see you full grown in your smart suit (panty lines showing and thick soled shoes perhaps?) spinning the cog as I spin out into oblivion, the wild night, the falling stars or just into some tangential ramble...
But here we are.
Adrift on this ocean, the scholastic tide that drags us, gratingly, as pebbles on the shore.
And now we sit, dreaming of Order and Progress, Brazil
And we sit and we write our notes
Martha in her khaki shorts
I in a vivid floral cotton shift
Contentedly idle and passive, perhaps peaceful or maybe just stoned
And so we sit and talk genocides and freedom at once
Me, Martha, and Latin American History 360.