Age of Reason
Joe Worthen

Sammy takes a history quiz, dissects the word Lincoln and is left staring at the hidden ‘L’, clearly existing, like a bone. He looks up from his desk with a blank and ominous expression.
The girls can’t all wear make-up yet but Suzie’s mom lets her paint her fingernails and sometimes you can catch her looking at her hands like they are part of someone else, like she’s not quite sure what they’re for.
A boy with a pig nose sits in time out on the perimeter of the playground, his face covered in dust, eyes bright, constructing Rome out of pine needles and rocks.
These hands might be for waving to boys.
A braid of voices through the day. Mrs. Johnson teaches 1st and 4th, Mrs. Henry teaches 2nd and 5th and Ms. Adele isn’t married but she’s the prettiest one. Robert has drawn up plans for this conquest and but he worries sometimes, after they settle down, that he won’t be able to make her feel pretty enough.
Instead of answering any questions Jenny draws butterflies all over her math test with colored pencils.
The fluorescent lights reflecting halos on bowl cuts during music class, a choir of recorders plays nearly every note at once. Thomas says he wants to play a guitar. Thomas says that recorders are for the birds and supports this claim by pointing out that there are no recorders on any Led Zeppelin tracks.
Sammy gets a hall pass and leaves the building. He stops on the front stoop, squinting. It feels obscene to stand in these exotic hours, exposed suddenly with the opening of fireproof doors. Sammy takes a breath of this vulgar air and walks between the rays of sunlight.
Ms. Adele tells Jenny that she was expecting numbers. In the corner she has written a red ‘F’ and drawn a red frown.
In the afternoon, with a full stomach, Robert feels a pollen-induced drowsiness and daydreams about his summer on the crystal beaches of the gulf coast, skidding down the lazy surf on a boogie board until he can smell the sand and the salt with nostalgic certainty.
Thomas sits on the toilet tearing pages out of his science textbook and burning black holes in them, one by one.  There are words on the walls of the stall, dinosaurs, hands and hearts, stars and a penis. Thomas stops to read a burning page regarding the lifespan of crustaceans.
Outside a sparrow pecks at the great aqueducts of Rome and the wind in the trees is interchangeable with the quiet rush of waves and the sound of an eraser of a chalkboard.
Teachers moving stacks of transparencies and practicing their own cursive, using hand sanitizer. Ms. Adele takes a painkiller and washes it down with apple juice in the cafeteria. The Janitor finds the phrase: “Lobsters can live for 100 years” written in giant red letters on the back of a stall door.
Suzie sits inside the lavender minivan with her drooling siblings. Her brother claps his tiny hands. Her mother says: “How was your day?” and Suzie says: “It was good,” and as they drive Suzie sees Sammy sitting on the curb, she waves at him through the back window. He smiles and waves a hall pass back at her.
Jenny comes inside at 9 pm with a jar of fireflies. She pokes holes in the aluminum foil and, for lack of a better idea, drops a slice of tomato in. She watches them go on and off and it reminds her of radio towers on the mountains at night and airplanes blinking calm code in the sky like constellations in an indecisive zodiac.
She stops on the way to bed and hangs her test on the refrigerator.