Opportunity

Every trauma is an opportunity, the professor says while standing in front of the whiteboard. A few take notes, but most are sitting and listening with passive faces. To mine new, idiosyncratic material demanding to be heard, he continues. Smiling towards his seminar group, he makes a gesture of knocking a little pick axe into stone. All in the process of making art, he concludes. Silence fills the auditorium for a brief moment. He takes a deep breath, winces and lets the snapping turtle have a decent go at his left eyebrow. Fucking, he screams. The group produces a murmuring sound, and two seated on the front row take their backpacks and leave the room. He’s on his knees, blurting out occasional, high pitched expressions of pain. See? he says rhetorically, so much pain. He tries to pull the turtle off of his face, but in doing so a chunk of eyebrow and flesh comes off in the turtle's beak. Oh my god, he says. The turtle snaps its beak feverishly and the eyebrow bit drops onto the tiled floor with a quiet splatter. His breath is fast and shallow now. But later, he says as a stream of blood forces his eyes shut, when all is said and done, I’ll have me a new story to write.