I’m sitting in the hallway with 3 friends,
4 hungry girls waiting for practice to start.

Another friend comes along with a brown paper bag.
In it, he has 2 donuts- 1 sugar coated and 1 frosted over.
The friend quirks a smile.
“Here, fight for them.”
He throws down the bag and turns away.

I’m closest.
Quick hands, I ****** the prize.
In seconds, the pack begins to howl,
1 begs, 1 reasons and 1 prepares to fight
they all move in to take me down i’m the enemy now they’re about to pounce i shout

“Wait!”

My voice echoes down the hall.
They freeze. They blink.

“2 donuts, right? 4 girls? Split 2 with 4 and we all get ½. That's reasonable, right?”

They sit back on their heels.
Slowly, no sudden movements, I reach into the bag.
We share our ½’s with sheepish smiles.

The friend turns back around and sees us all happily munching away.
“Wait, did you split those evenly?”
He says it with such disdain.

Is it so wrong to want the world to work in a way where everyone wins?

We met on Facebook.
At least, I met you.
I read your story.
   We’re a lot alike, you know.
   We both like imagining things from the trash of everyday.
   I too have a bestfriend who I walk to school with,
   a bedroom that I’d never want to leave,
   A face, a body, a mouth, though it may speak a different tongue.
   I want to go to school and grow up happy too.
But you’ve picked up more pieces than I’ve ever had a chance to see fall.
Sacrificed so much for love when too often I’m neglecting to care at all.
I’m not sure I could, but I hope, if the time ever comes, I can be like you.
   You know, at my school, they have us sign a pledge at the beginning of the year.
   It’s a slideshow about anti-bullying that everyone clicks through and forgets.
   But you’ve made me remember.
If a bully is someone who kicks others when they’re down,
then the bureaucracy strangling your hopes is nothing but.
Lashing out in the name of security but really in their own fear,
obscuring the fact that you’re really just like me, just like them,
refusing to recognize the sacrifices you’ve made
and reward your good natured humanity with a place to be happy,
a place to hold as home.
   I took a pledge to not sit silent, and so here’s my voice.
Maybe one day you’ll hear it in person.
Maybe, one day, enough people will stand up that we’ll be able to meet and grow up happy,
      Together.

A shout out to my history teacher who makes the time to teach
for I’ve picked up on the subtext she can’t speak:

if you teach to the test no one’s really being taught
all we learn is to chase empty numbers
and you wonder
why we’re all burnt out
when the end goal isn’t our happiness now

when the very organizations meant to support education
profit off those who have no choice but to turn to them

when the ones who can pay to prep
the ones who work until they can't see straight,
the so called “high achievers”
are the only ones who matter
and we ourselves kick everyone else off the ladder

if standardization is supposed to make education equal
then at the very least it should teach
that we all have a spot,
that in society, we can all be contributing members,
but it’s not.

like my history teacher’s given me,
we need lessons to life rather than to test

it’s time we set a better example for our students
Teach us that even when the blocks have fallen down, we can rebuild the tower