Flood

The hallway is an empty
riverbed, smooth and barren.
At three o’clock classroom

doors open like dams.
      Gullies of teens stream
out, to become one
      flowing body.  A torrent
of fauxhawks and ponytails
      channels along the linoleum.

The drowned boy floats along

just below the surface,
      caught in an undercurrent,
bobbing past the

      sightless stares of teachers.

He bumps into lockers, is
            scraped along concrete walls,
swirled in and out of bathroom stalls,

      whirled past indifferent
          pools of preoccupation
               to be swept out in a current

               of apathy and oversight
      into a sea of needles
and
    broken
glass.