Little Hearts

Doodlings of a girl.

The teacher drones on in the cold classroom. In the background the hum of the old radiator, never ending, breathes.

Look in the front row to the listening children, eager to learn.The intelligent ones with brains that are sponges in the way they soak up information so very quickly.

But in the back, on a desk that has initals of the old students etched into the wood, she sits. Quietly, with her silk-spun curls falling delicately onto her shoulder, her soft brown eyes focused on her notebook page. While the teacher endlessly talks, she draws on the page she is supposed to take notes on. Little hearts spiral on the page; little grey hearts drawn with a chewed-up pencil. A common doodle that the girls seemed to have taken up recently; but to this one girl, it holds so much more.

One of them is for her father, slowly rotting in his jail cell; as lonely as her mother who is busy at her job right now.

The next is for the kitten, the one named Kiki. The one who should be laying in the bed they bought for her. The one who ran outside and never came home.

The one with the lightest colors within the border is for her older sister, away at college. The one she misses so much that her heart aches.

And lastly, for her first love. The one who sits next to her, sketching her face which he finds so beautiful... working up the courage to tell her his feelings.