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Laura-Corina Miron is participating in the 5th International Literary Creation Competition from Bucharest, Romania and is 40 years old. We thank for the participation and wish her success.

The German Class

The children weren’t paying much attention, German class was by far not among their traditional  subjects to be taken seriously, so it took a couple of seconds for one of the more insightful pupils, a girl, to randomly glance over to the teacher, take notice and simply speak up without raising her hand – children never did that anyway, not with her “Are you alright, Miss?” The Miss spoke out the girl’s name in reply, her own made up teacher’s habit to make sure that she knew who to have in mind while addressing them and that the one being addressed was paying attention. “Of course I am. What is it?” “You are crying.” The teacher snorted “No I’m not” and wondered what the children’s inside joke was this time.

 Abundant, silent rivers of tears swept down her face as she went on with the lesson, unaware of herself, trying to catch the noisy children’s attention, to sparkle some kind of interest in the use and forms of German past tense. She handed out work sheets, read them out loud, checked what had been understood, asserted that it was next to nothing but then they had been unsuccessfully practicing the same basic notions for some years: Mainly nouns. Verbs posed an unsettling danger, the teacher felt, and she didn’t trust adjectives. Her cheeks were inundated and she was wet with tears from the tip of her fingers and right up to to her elbows from her constantly touching her face while talking, fiddling with pieces of white and colored chalk by the blackboard and sheets of paper on the teacher’s desk but still she carried on. The class went quiet at a certain point and she felt silently amazed at that, grateful that she had finally managed to grab the children’s attention to the topic but they were only watching the emotional flood unfolding in front of them as she insisted on uselessly speaking in German in front of the class. She finally checked the time, she had been avoiding time for too long. It was time. Relieved, she attempted to take in a deep breath for a heartfelt “Auf Wiedersehen, Kinder!” when all of a sudden, as if heralding the end, she felt the skin on her face all moist, her brain poked at her conscience, she realized she must have been crying all along, she was heartbroken, that one man had been her sole joy, her solace, there had been no marriage and no children, no family to reach out for on her side, it had been just her and him together for years on end, times of deep precious love that her soul had planned on taking along with her beyond the death that she had, from some time now, had to admit she was starting to fear, she feared parting from him in any way and then, out of the blue, just a few days earlier, he had left her with no explanation and now she had no more air left running through her lungs. The voidness of her own time struck her and she fell. The class watched her fall, also struck with awe, while the insightful little girl repeated her futile question concerning Miss’ wellbeing.