the traveling salesman

I like the sound of the hallway fish tank.

The perpetual filter trickle reassures the stale air, drowns out the scratching pencils, scribbling on to higher education, but lower expectations. Numbers and facts, displaced; a process systematically unlearned along the way. Unbuckled, the heart from above the legs. Six months in, and four months dead. Eight months gone, twelve months ago. Two strangers hurtling across the nightscape at separate speeds from opposite directions, and towards the same station. Who derails first? Learned for a moment's use, and gone. Like glass on a fire alarm, a purpose fulfilled in the most dire of circumstances. It now wanders the tarmac with empty suitcases, waiting for a better reason.

And now? Just gone.
With time as currency and the exchange rate falling, the sun sets on another career of selling ice to eskimos.