(I found this poem as I was cleaning at the end of the school year. It looks, by the students named on the surrounding pages, that I wrote this in 2005.)
She is so tired by 8th period, but this could be her favorite. By the time this class rolls around, her heart feels like a squishy brown banana. Softened by the day’s bruising.
“Say Something Real,” she thinks as she looks into each set of eyes, full of disappointment and suspicion. “Something,” she implores the ceiling for help. It never answers, only rains down more questions.
“They’re only children!” Storms rage from desks, eyes gather herds of black clouds that twist into hurricanes. You’d have to be blind not to see these changes. Sometimes she feels she is the only one that does.
Her peers have called her weak. And she stands in the rain with out an umbrella or a coat. The others run shrieking under eaves while she stomps in the puddles barefoot.
“Say Something True,” she reminds herself. So she lifts her hands to catch shining sapphire crystals that melt into tiny, barely perceptible rivers.
