Random Prompt #9

[Tiger the Lion]

Homework Shirk

The tablecloth continues to rumple
beneath my math book as I sit, desolate,
the only one at the kitchen table.
For two laborious hours I have been calculating
how to slip away from this task unobserved.
Perhaps an alien ship will spirit me far
away from this planet #3 where children
are tortured with division and the mysterious
and missing Mr. X. All four corners of the page
are covered in doodles, five problems remain
unanswered and unanswerable. Miserable,
I wish for a sixth sense that would conjure
the answers, like magic, into the computer
of my mind.  Seven geese fly by the window
as I stare out. A wild thing inside me ghosts
out to join them, the eighth wild thing, free
with only sun and wind to worry my new bird brain.
But I am stuck to this chair like bubblegum,
staring at this humdrum task that I never asked
to learn. Nine months of school are far too many
for a ten year old to tolerate. “Give me Liberty!”
said Mr. Henry, I learned about that yesterday …

Mic drop. I almost said double bonus points to include tablecloths, aliens and bubblegum, but you beat me to the finish line. Thanks for setting the bar so high.