Room 165

Room 165

Sitting in a stuffy room, head in my hand, bored to death. I gaze out of the window at the grey sky and the bare trees that surround it. My mind drifts off to a happier place, like Spain, Ruidera, where I used to spend my summertime with my family when I was a child. I remember the lake and rivers that flowed though the miles upon miles of Spanish countryside, the secret valleys in which me and my brother explored, the late night card games placing high priced bets with broken matches, My first kiss with a girl whose name or face I cannot recall just her soft lips and her smell of the grape fields where we’d play on the Sunday evenings by a setting sun. She taught me Spanish as I helped her with English. Six weeks with her was a paradise, Spain was our back garden and the world was the front.

I’m brought back to England when one of the fuckers in the room shouted a joke, and the cackles and roars of laughter that followed grated on my nerves.

The teacher arrives after fifteen minutes of me suffering the noise and sight of everyone around me. The teacher talks gibberish about “Mac Beth” or world war two or whatever flavour of the week her teaching planner has in store for us, but all I care about is when my next fag will be. My headache booms as someone switches on the lights. The only good thing about today is that “she’s” here, intelligent yet elegant, her lip are all I notice, I wonder if they taste and feel like my childish Spanish love.
Her beauty still isn’t enough to lift my spirits. The windows, for some reason, are coated with plastic, letting less and less light and colour in, making this the gloomiest room in the building. No wonder they fucking teach kids here.

I’ll just drift to Spain again.