I'm told education is important
And I agree
But is school trying to make me stressed?

I'm hearing about a 50 page assignment
I'm already stressed
I am told I am presenting something next week
More stress

What do they want? My best?
I'm not at my best when I am stressed
Many students like me would know

Sorry miss I know I forgot that homework.
I was stressed
I am too stressed
Yes I'll do it in the weekend
When I'm supposed to be relaxing
Free from the chains of school
Yet somehow
The chains are still there
And they're stressing me even more

This world is a huge mess
My life is a huge mess

People yell at me
I'm unloved,
Bullied,
Mentally beaten,
Sleep deprived,
Hungry

I get anxiety attacks
Because of my dad,
School,
People,
The voices in my head,
And my own thoughts

And all I can say is "I'm fine."
I'm sorry,
I can't do this anymore,
I don't know if I'll ever come back
I'm not strong enough anymore,
I'm losing this fight
Goodbye, I'm done

i dont understand
what are they talking about
my mind is so scattered
my heart is racing
what are these notes
what the hell?

open textbooks like broken promises,
pages creased and corners frayed,
sticky notes smudged;
my eyes blur over the words
the words in black and white and blue;
my fingers in blue spots and red tint
fumble with the edges of the paper,
cold and clumsy -
it's hard to stay awake.

Life is a series of experimentation
Tests based on multiple observations
Sometimes of the same thing
And yet I still have questions that still need to be answered
And there are no 4 options to choose from
And even if there were
The letters would have disappeared from how many times
I’ve shaded the circle
Just to erase it again
And sometimes I try to look for a quick summary
Just a simple short answer question
But there’s so many different variations
And none of them fit right
So I end up filling 3 sheets of paper
With just one answer
Just to get no credit
Because your teacher wanted you to
Summarize
What’s too much for you
To summarize

Once I think I’ve found a hypothesis
I receive some data feedback that
Doesn’t correlate
And so this idea
Of what this is
Of what love is
Of what life is
Can never be really answered
Like a webster’s dictionary entree
Or by anyone’s own experience
Because like time
It changes and grows

There was a story of a famous cobbler
Who was visited by a demon
And he was forced to make shoes for it
And when it came back for its shoes
It mutated between an elephant
A mouse
A man
A dog
I don’t know how to cobble the shoes that could fit
So many forms
From hooves
To talons
To perfect pedicured toes
That’s how love has always come into my life
And yet I have felt it so many times the same
Like a squeeze not on my heart
But my entire chest
But how do you cobble shoes
To fit so many feet
While staying the same

It’s like trying to explain why you hate something
To someone who has no idea
But you have that idea
Because of jealousy
Or something that happened
Maybe too long ago for you to
Really
Put words to it
But there’s that feeling in your stomach
And your brain is mashing the eject button
Whenever you have to be close
To this disgusting
Terrible
Ugly thing
That people would hate too
If they only knew
The feeling you
Just have

Until you
I didn’t have that missing link
And suddenly there are words in my mouth
To explain
The evolutionary changes in my mind
Of why
And not how

My Lucy
Knowing that you see the same sky above me
With me
Makes the stars diamonds
You are the reasoning as to why
I have love
Why I try to love
Why I live to try
To love
You are the clips in my brain
Constantly cycling through
The wrinkle of your jawline when you laugh
The way your shoulders bounce
The way you kissed me on new years

You kissed everyone else there
But I had to blame my sore stomach
Tying itself in knots
On the alcohol
But it was the butterflies
That you set a fire to
In my lower intestine
And they were crawling
Up my throat
Choking me
With their wings

And when you finally wanted me
As I watched you,
Wanted you
On the same warm rubber
Of the trampoline
In late spring

But the same rubber
Was cool
The night that I connected your lips to mine
And the look you gave me was
So confused
And distant
We were all so close
And the heat was radiated
Piled bodies pressed together
On top of us
Around us
And yet you managed to pull away

I wanted to break that distance
But that dark night was so bright
And so vivid
That in my mind
The look you had
Pulled away
Again
And again
And again
And in the yellow room where
Everything was so warm
And loving and hard
When it needed to be but
So soft
Recalling that time is
So hard
Because while the yellow is
So bright
It hurts
And photocopies into my brain
Like it was recorded over the same tape
That took in the image
Of you pulling away
The warm yellow
Cut
Again and again
By your face
Pulling away
Further and further
From mine

I cling to those warm images
Trying to think of just those warm images
Why can’t I just think of those warm images
The smell and feeling of you lingers
Like the heart beats I felt throughout my body
I think of you
And not just myself in your eyes
I don’t think of how sad I was
How much I wanted your attention
To validate me
Call me a person like Adam’s animals
Claimed with names like labels
That one has to live up to
I just wanted to experience
Your presence
And that yellow warmth
I just wanted to watch you
As a painter
As he would paint with such a tired, wise, skilled hand
And learn by just observing how you take in the world
And repeat it in your own imagery
Your own beautiful imagery

And I burn
When I think how people have seen this
And scrape at the surface of all you are
To present you dirt
Where tectonic plates should be moved
To give you the yellow sunshine beneath your feet
And swirl around your hair
Like a halo
Just to see how beautifully you reflect it
And when you came to me
With balloons twisted around your ankles
I wanted to hold you to the ground
And be your tethering rock to the world
I loved you too much to say the right words
To twist our fingers together into knots
And lock into place what we could be
So I turned away and let you be pulled back
A memory lost to gravity

To this day I can quote all of lilo and stitch
Or homeward bound
And still they sit on my shelf
Only to exist
When I chance a glance at their titles
And certain scenes come back
In vivid Technicolor
Playing in the back of my mind
And like someone had ****** with the tv’s color settings
Everything is just so
Yellow

We assignment felonies, who got no melody
It be a blessing to breathe but mans can't find the remedy.
School work got us incubated, well tubed in
Hospitalize for ages.
Penned in these cages
A constant grind on the daily.

Once a man emancipate
8 to 5 is gonna hit him with a straight.
From a frying pan to the fire
He's been stuck in a sticky state.
******* in a system that's meant for retire
That's what he gonna inspire.

Beware to those who tryna finesse the system
Life is gonna hit them with an intricate plot.
If you can't Euro-step them in quick time
It gonna be raps, just watch.

Wooden walls that form around my bed,
Laughing at something my roommate said
I see way too many faces in the day;
They're all the same, nothing changed from yesterday.

These paths they've kissed my feet.
We weren't allowed to cross the street.
We joke about it being a jail,
But to be honest I wouldn't pay that bail

It gets old,
But wouldn't trade it for gold.
I know that these people, they love me.
But out of everyone, baby
You cooked me up this recipe
To believe in destiny.

Winter's always that coldest up North.
Walking outside was always a force.
Your hand was the only warmth that I wanna feel.
Coming back from spring break, that feeling was unreal.

The springtime came and the rain fell.
We know our hearts, they were parallel.
Our love's on track for the end.
Teachers knew we were more than friends.

It gets old,
But wouldn't trade it for gold.
I know that these people, they love me.
But out of everyone, baby
You cooked me up this recipe
To believe in destiny.

Now we're eighteen and out of here.

19
dictionaries stacked on the shelf near the blackboard
19
papers i have lying on my desk
19
thoughts inside my head
19
people sitting around me
19
threads lying lonely on the floor
19
pencils scratching
19
florescent lights bearing down upon my weary eyes
19.