the classroom hums like a beehive,
buzzing with words that do not belong to me.
i sit in the back, hands folded,
trying to take up less space,
trying not to be seen.
but they see me.
they always do.
eyes like knives, voices like hands,
pushing, pulling, twisting
stretching me into something
too ugly to keep, too strange to hold.
i laugh when they laugh.
i pretend not to hear when they don’t.
my name is a song sung off-key,
passed between them like a bad joke,
a whisper behind cupped hands,
a note scrawled in the margins of a test
where the teacher will not look.
i carry their voices home in my pockets.
unfold them beneath my sheets,
let them crawl under my skin,
settle into my bones,
make a home in the quiet of my ribs.
the mirror holds me like a stranger,
mouth too stiff, eyes too empty,
body too much,
body not enough.
years pass, and their voices do not leave.
they linger, soft as breath on glass,
cold as a winter morning,
as a hand pressed firm against my back,
reminding me to shrink.
i speak, and my words sound borrowed.
i move, and i second-guess my steps.
i reach, and the world recoils —
as if i am still twelve,
still waiting for permission to exist.