"Finals Week" by Dominique Ficklin

trudging through
letters that don’t look like words anymore
my body is beginning to look like a tilde
like in the word
Manaña

there’s always hope
in the morrow.

or maybe like araña
and the only reason I remember
that one is because
it looked like ‘arachnophobia’
which reminded me of
a movie
and I stopped studying

and started thinking of large spiders
and the web created by
Penelope as she weaved
while waiting for the
return of Ulysses.

that’s when the words began

floating

on the covers of hardback rectangles
brown, black and green,

on the fourth floor
behind that metal door.