A Monotonous Exam

I tap the back of the pen against my forehead,
And glance over to the clock.
The boredom and tension of the room is palpable,
Every student is looking around,
Hoping for something even mildly interesting to happen.
I lean back on my chair,
My feet start tapping on the ground,
I hastily scribble a line of Simon Commission,
Marvelling that highlighting points did help after all.
I lean further back and the chair’s front legs get lifted from the floor,
I think hard and another line comes to my head,
But just as I’m about to write,
I realize that I’ve pushed the chair too far,
And the next thing I know the air is knocked out of me,
And BAM!
I hit the floor,
The thud of the fall snapped kids to attention.
A round of muffled laughter erupts from the classroom,
Everyone glad for the distraction,
I get up, slightly flushed, and sit back down,
Surprisingly finding myself fighting a smile.
The teacher bangs her duster on the table,
Demanding “pin-drop silence”.
In just a moment, the glee is gone,
And a hush falls over the class,
As everybody starts wracking their brain for non-elusive answers,
Slipping once again into the surrealism of the exam.

~Nehal

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Credits for the prompt go to Tiction @ Fictionally Crazy! Thanks, lah 😃. So, I wrote this without giving too much thought, and it turned out fine. It would have been much better as a short story, I guess, but I am too lazy to change it now. I’m just mostly glad that there’s still a part of me that can write poems and stories that aren’t all sad 😂. I hope you liked it!!

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