on saturdays, they broke our knees.

mondays and wednesdays were reserved
for the study of literature,
for splitting open our heads and branding the words of the great writers
into our bones,
copying them over and over in our own blood,
memorizing masterpieces until we knew them forwards and backwards,
in order to remind us that there was always someone out there
who was better than us
(so we might as well not even try).

on saturdays, they broke our knees,
because pain would make us stronger.

on tuesdays and thursdays,
we were chained to a wall of numbers
and forced to take it apart piece by piece
(then put it back together, exactly how it had been before)
learning the true nature of  things from the inside out,
so that we would always have an answer for everything,
and never have to just sit and wonder
at the world around us.

on saturdays, they broke our knees,
so that we would learn to know the sound of shattering better than our own skin.

fridays were the days
when we were taught history,
when we were told the stories of our pasts and their pasts
and all the pasts that had ever been,
so that we would learn from our mistakes (and their mistakes,
and all the mistakes that had ever been)
a thousand times over—
learn them so well that we would carry them with us forever,
and never be tricked into letting go.

on saturdays, they broke our knees,
so that we would always have something familiar to fall back on.

sundays were our day of rest,
when we stole a rowboat
and paddled off into the mist,
until the fog was so thick that we couldn’t see our own feet
(it was the closest we ever got
to emptiness,
not that we would ever admit
we desired it).

but on saturdays, they broke our knees,
so that we would remember to come back eventually.

we always did.