If you don’t know the answer
it’s C
If you don’t care if cheating is immoral anymore
it’s normal
If some days the idea of shoving a pencil into your flesh
is tempting
                 It’s high school

Welcome to the flawed world
of unhealthy habits and competition
a parade of bent and folded bodies
we show off
graphite scratched skin
Future leaders stand like statues covered in graffiti
among ripped canvases and unfinished art projects
Waiting to be beautiful

Friend groups made up of alternatively
muddy and magnificent water colors
of scars and secrets they hide from their parents,
drawn on their skin,
settled in the cracks of broken frames
hiding wolverines under shattered glass and splintered wood

It’s not beautiful to be broken,
but outside of here, it’s beautiful to be alive
and be what you are
so turn scars into lightning bolts
and let stories drip down your chin in vibrant colors
you can’t see

Our best traits
are tattooed on our backbones
hidden under layers of weather-worn skin and clothes
        maybe we can't see them,
but they keep us standing up

So maybe it is all a competition
or a lie
or maybe we’re not real at all
But maybe that’s okay
Because neither is any of this

When I was fifteen I listened to a religion teacher say
“Maybe” there should be a queer holocaust
and I pretended it didn’t hurt me,
the same way I pretended when she said
trans people mutilate their bodies by becoming who they are
when she misgendered Leelah Alcorn
when she called asexuals freaks of nature
when the other queer kid got sent to therapy
for having the audacity to even try to start a GSA
and suggesting that maybe everyone deserves to feel safe here
and my friends
think I’m overreacting
“It’s not a big deal!”
“Get over it!”
“Stop trying to be so special,
you should be expecting it at a Catholic school,
this is just what religion is like”
Is it?
Head down
Head down
Voices down,
you can get expelled for disagreeing with the archdiocese
Whisper in the hallway
about all the girls with pregnancy scares
who believed that
love
was the best contraceptive
Is that what Jose Gomez is teaching us?
No it doesn’t hurt
to watch my friends cry
about boys who yell “******”
down high school hallways
No it doesn’t hurt
when my friend asked me
“what would your kids even call you?”
No it doesn’t hurt
to be like this
Or at least
I can pretend it doesn’t

You told me you were suicidal
and I wanted to tell you how much it hurt to be a person
how my skin and bones ached to part of infinity a never ending spiral of never again having to say
“I’m sorry”
after coming out
You told me you were suicidal
and I wanted to tell you I wasn’t qualified to give advice on the matter of life and death
I have seen too many bare mattresses to understand
what home really is
am I just an ever changing notion of how a problem student might look like
some futuristic idea of the changing tides
being pushed and tormented by the moon
no I am not qualified to tell you to keep living
You told me you were suicidal
and I remembered the page in my ninth grade diary saying the same
followed by the words
“I don’t know what my name is,
not the one they gave me,
but the one I’m going to give myself
The one they won’t put on my grave,
but the one I’ll put on my heart,
the one God will call me in heaven
and the one mom will deny I have.
I don’t know our name,
and I think I want to die.”
You told me you were suicidal
and I typed and retyped messages,
playing in my head the ways you had already left
and didn’t want to make this one about me,so  I said
“Call a hotline”.
You told me you were suicidal
and my bones ached remembering the pain of what it is to be a person.

Dear Sophie,
I should apologize.
for the way the sun shone in your eyes the day we met
It wasn’t love
Not at first,
not at last.
I should apologize
for the way I held your hand
so tenderly
like you were the one afraid of the world,
I should apologize for the kisses
for the car windows
for lying to your mom
I’m sorry.
For all the times I told you I was busy
I wasn’t.
You should have fallen in love with someone else
I deserved better
You should have fallen in love with someone else
You deserved better
You deserved better than a voicemail
than generated replies
than robotic tones
and transparent lies
Dear Sophie,
I should apologize
for the way the sun shone in your eyes the day we met
because I fell in love with it,
without realizing there were days
It wouldn’t shine.

Every color besides blue or pink
is not purple
so stop trying to color me that way
as though I am a midpoint
on an unchanging line
a spot that only slides
forward and back
not a fluid point
constantly moving
up and down
A changing person
with many thoughts
capable of more than
either,
or,
and inbetween
Everything and nothing
all at once
I am more than boxes
definitions
M or F
neither
not both
I am not a shade of purple
on a line
between pink or blue
I am every color on the spectrum
and some still not listed
I am not yours to define
I am mine

I miss writing
I miss the way it felt to hear keyboard keys clacking
and the way it felt to hear my heart
emptying
I miss being able to get out of bed
being able to go out with my friends
depression has a way of turning a person
into a shell and taking
everything away
the ink in my blood
dried to nothing
perpetual numbness
where once was thought, emotion,
something
at least I think there used to be

I want to tell you a story
but I haven’t learned the words
I know it’s out there somewhere
and I know inside me it burns

I don’t know if I have a secret
but I have an idea for one
I’ll make it up and say it to you
so you can load your gun

I have a lot of excuses
but never none for you
I want a reason why
I let myself see this through

I don’t have any thoughts
I’ve thought up on my own
I just let other people tell them to me
Until they’re engraved in my bones

I wish I had a story
one to make you stay
but I know in my heart you’re not real
but I think I’ll meet you one day