Ten Minutes

I wrote this as the first chapter to a book I'm working on but it doesn't fit with my concise style. Now it's a poem.

Under the twisted distortion of comforter and sheet Jason lay awake.  He still had ten minutes. 

Heated breath collected in the thick air around him and Jason tried to imagine this was his last day in a cocoon.  He only had ten minutes

Ten minutes for what?  Do ten minutes really matter?  The cocoon melted back into lifeless blankets.  He suffocated without resistance.

"Ja-SON!”  The voice travelled shrilly through the walls and burst through his closed door.  He gritted his teeth and tried not to hear.  What was so urgent?

She crashed dishes and blasted water.  Was that why he was supposed to get up?  The dishes could wait until he got home�"he had school for Christ’s sake.  Now less than ten minutes.

A loud crash

Startled Jason into throwing off the covers.  The wind stung his sticky skin as he listened�"had the dishes grown tired of waiting?  He imagined them falling over each other onto the tiled floor, the jagged pieces clawing their way through the house.  Looking for him.  Then the alarm.  He jumped.

Now he had ten minutes to get to the bus.

Glass chinking softly in the kitchen. Her blue veins expand as she brushes the smooth wholeness of the shattered glass.  The smallest shards would find their way into the bristles no matter how much she swept and,

Jason imagined,

mix with debris left over from previous mistakes.

But

He saw her standing over the stove holding a perfect plate in one hand and a metal spatula in the other.  She had made breakfast.

“Jason, sit down I scrambled up some eggs for you,” she set down the loaded plate on the table.  The veins remained thin and relaxed. 

“I don’t have time.”

Author's Note

The indentions shouldn't be there but I don't have time to fix them right now! I did the rest of the formatting on purpose :)